Read the Journal of Andrew Ellicott sometime. He set the the Ellicott stone which marks the 31st parallel between the Mississippi territory and the Spanish territory of the Florida panhandle.

It is still the southern boundary of much of lower Alabama and Mississippi.

It is amazing what he had to go through in the late 1700's to survey that line.

We have a neat map topo map framed of the Rome quadrant that covers the area where our cabin is located up on Lookout Mountain. It was done in the late 1800's and it is interesting to see the locations of the old homesteads up near Little River Canyon and to see the Coosa river's path before it was dammed up to form Weiss Lake and to see where all the ferry crossings were.

I love old stuff like that.

Next time any of you are North of Creola, AL. on Highway 43 near Bucks, AL, pull off the side of the road and take a short hike off the beaten path and check out the Ellicott Stone. I found out through a few beers and a cigar on the back porch, that my buddy Skip had actually surveyed off of it back in the 1970's and says that it's location is remarkably accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellicott%27s_Stone

Another interesting article about mounds along the line:

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/02/surveyor_finds_old_mounds_mark.html

"We were excited because we were finding them where I thought they would be," Denny said. "We were finding them to a 10th of a second of where we thought they would be. And they were surveyors and when they found them, they could recognize what they were."

Facinating...