My Highpoints and Tripoints

As of 2018 I have visited 7 highpoints of the 50 United States:

1. Hawaii - Mauna Kea
2. Florida - Britton Hill
3. Indiana - Hoosier Hill
4. Arkansas - Magazine Mountain
5. Ohio - Campbell Hill 
6. Nebraska - Panorama Point
7. Missouri - Taum Sauk Mountain

I have visited 6 tripoints where the boundaries of three or more states meet:

1. Arizona - Colorado - New Mexico - Utah (known as the Four Corners)
2. Indiana - Michigan - Ohio
3. Illinois - Kentucky - Missouri
4. Colorado - Nebraska - Wyoming
5. Kansas - Missouri - Oklahoma
6. Arkansas - Missouri - Oklahoma

A Walk to the Top of Taum Sauk Mountain - The Highpoint of Missouri

Taum Sauk Mountain, Taum Sauk Mountain State Park, Missouri
October 14, 2016

The Mina Sauk Falls trail head starts at a graveled parking lot,
making it a short walk to the top of Taum Sauk Mountain.

The Taum Sauk Mountain highpoint is on the way to Mina Sauk Falls.

A 1,000-foot long concrete sidewalk leads you from the parking lot to the Missouri highpoint.

At the end of the sidewalk is the highest point of natural elevation in the state of Missouri.

"Climb" is not the most accurate verb describing
how you get to the top of Taum Sauk Mountain.

The highpoint of Missouri has a boulder, marble tablet,
trail register, and a bench to rest after the "climb".

In 1991 the Missouri Association of Registered Land Surveyors identified the top of Taum Sauk Mountain as the highest elevation of Missouri at 1,772.68 feet above mean sea level.

Google aerial image of the highpoint of Missouri (blue diamond) on top of Taum Sauk Mountain, showing the route of the sidewalk from the parking lot to the highpoint.

A Tripoint by the Side of the Highway

Southwest City, Missouri
October 15, 2016

The AR-MO-OK Tripoint

The location where the boundaries of the states of Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma meet is an easy place to get to. It is next to a highway with three numbers — Oklahoma State Highway 20, Arkansas Highway 43, and Missouri Route 43 — and across from the Corner Stone Station and convenience store.

Since it was easy to get to the tripoint, I will take the easy route in providing some facts about this state tripoint.

• This state tripoint was officially established in 1907 when Oklahoma was admitted as a state.
• The roots of the future state tripoint go back to the early 1800s when the east-to-west and north-to-south boundary lines were set.
• The east-to-west boundary line was established in 1819 when the Arkansas Territory was created, thereby separating it from the Missouri Territory. This boundary was set at 36 degrees 30 minutes, which later became prominent as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
• The north-to-south boundary line was established in 1821 when Missouri was admitted as a state. The north end point of this boundary line was set at the mouth of the Kansas River as it enters the Missouri River (known as the Kawsmouth) and proceeded approximately 180 miles directly south to the east-to-west boundary between Missouri and Arkansas where it became the southwest corner of Missouri.
• In 1823 a monument stone was set at Missouri's southwest corner. Although the monument is weathered and difficult to read, you can still see "Misr 1823" on its north side and "Ark" on the south side.
• The Ozark Culture Club in 1915 memorialized the tripoint by constructing a concrete cuboid on the spot. The 1823 monument was placed in the center of the top of the cuboid.
• The local Lion's Club refurbished the tripoint in 1955 by adding a concrete pedestal and a circular concrete skirt surrounding the tripoint. The skirt shows the state boundaries as they meet at the tripoint with figures of the states in their right location.

View to north on Highway 43
Tripoint is on left (west) side of highway

Thee 1823 Monument Stone of the Southwest Corner of Missouri

View to east with Oklahoma is in the foreground, Missouri in the left
background, and Arkansas in the right background

KSMOOK (Kansas - Missouri - Oklahoma)

Cherokee County, Kansas
Ottawa County, Oklahoma
Newton County, Missouri
June 15, 2014

The Kansas-Missouri-Oklahoma tripoint inside the wood enclosure

If you drive along Interstate 44 and cross the Oklahoma - Missouri border, you can point to the northwest and say that Kansas is just over yonder. And when there are three states in the vicinity, most likely there is a tripoint ready to be found. In this case it is the boundary point shared by the states of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, a mere 850 feet north of Interstate 44. The story of this tripoint, like all tripoints in this country, starts with political subdivisions of the United States.

With the westward expansion of the United States came the further subdividing of America. It only takes two state boundaries to create a tripoint, and the western boundary of Missouri and the boundary between Kansas and Oklahoma meet to establish this tripoint. Missourians started things off in 1817 when Missouri citizens petitioned for statehood. They requested the western boundary of the state to be coterminous with the eastern boundary line of the Osage nation.The Missouri Territory legislature in 1818 submitted a memorial to Congress requesting statehood, but requesting to move the western boundary of the proposed state 60 miles to the west.

The request by the citizens of Missouri for statehood was tangled in a number of other political issues, which ultimately were resolved in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The proposed constitution for the future state of Missouri established the western boundary of the state as proposed in 1818. However, Congress was not yet ready to accept this boundary, and like many other things in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the western boundary of the state of Missouri became a compromise between the boundary lines proposed by the citizens in 1817 and that proposed in the constitution in 1820.

Adopted by Congress and signed by President James Monroe on March 6, 1820, Section Two of the Missouri Enabling Act of 1820 defined the state boundaries of Missouri. The western state boundary was established at the mouth of the Kansas River as it enters the Missouri River (known as the Kawsmouth), thence northward and southward all the way to Arkansas. 

The 1938 National Youth Administration Monument,
50 feet west of the 2008 remonumented tripoint

Thirty-four years later Congress as part of the Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854 established the east-west boundary line between Kansas Territory and the unorganized territory to the south, which later became the state of Oklahoma. The boundary was set at the 37th degree of latitude and was offset from the southern boundary line of Missouri, which is at 36 degrees, 30 minutes. Between 1820 and 1854 the political issues facing the United States regarding future slave states changed substantially, and establishing territory boundaries at 36 degrees, 30 minutes was no longer relevant. Congress in 1850 established the northern boundary of the New Mexico Territory at 37 degrees, which allowed three states to the north with four degrees of latitude each. Congress continued this boundary line at 37 degrees for the southern boundary of Kansas to allow creation of four states with three degrees of latitude each.

So in 1854 the future tripoint between the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma was formed. Three years later the 800 members of an expedition surveying the western boundary of the state of Missouri were the first to find the Kansas-Missouri-Oklahoma tripoint. We had to wait another 80 years before the tripoint was set in the ground with a monument. The Depression-era National Youth Administration in 1938 built a rock monument on the spot where the three states met, or at least where they thought they met. This rock monument was discovered to be 50 feet west of the tripoint when the Missouri Association of County Surveyors remonumented the tripoint in 2004. Today you can step up to the concrete plate and place yourself in three states at the same time.

Standing in three states at the same time

The 2008 tripoint monument, looking north
along the Kansas - Missouri boundary

Yom HaShoah

St. Petersburg, Florida
April 11, 2010

I don't know why, but I felt compelled to visit the Florida Holocaust Museum while I was in the Tampa Bay area. I previously visited several times the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Beverly Hills, always captivated by the lectures from survivors of the Holocaust. So on that Sunday morning I drove south from my hotel in Largo to the museum in St. Petersburg. As I approached the cashier and took out my wallet, she told me that admission to the museum today was free because it was Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust.

Free Fallin' from 13,000 Feet

Eloy, Arizona
March 5, 2010

As part of my discovery of new places on my cross country travels in 2010, I have also had an opportunity to set right those things I have aspired to do in the past but have failed to do so. I've challenged myself in the past to skydive—eager to realize the unknown fears and see if I could confront those fears—but I never stepped up to the challenge. So that's how I found myself at 13,000 feet above the ground in southern Arizona, falling free with a new acquaintance strapped to my back. To my surprise and delight, there was no hesitation on my part on what is frequently used as a joke: jumping out of a perfectly fine working airplane.

Returning to My Childhood Years, Part 2

Victorville, California
February 16, 2010

Guys really do read Playboy and don’t just look at the pictures. Case in point. I still remember the ambitions of July 1982 Playmate of the Month Lynda Wiesmeier, “To revisit all the places I’ve lived in the past.” Although I read that Playmate Data Sheet long ago when I was 21, her ambition has stuck with me as I have imagined many a time returning to my childhood playgrounds – Lincoln, Nebraska; Dayton, Ohio; Victorville, California; and Hahn, Germany. But I have not expended the time or energy to return to those playgrounds except for a quick drive through Victorville several years ago. My life has been the worse for not revisiting those memories.

An opportunity was now in front of me. Victorville was not far away, only a few hours of easy driving on freeways from Carlsbad, and I had all the time I needed to seek and cherish those places waiting for me in Victorville with precious memories of my childhood.

Our first home in the desert when my family transferred to George Air Force Base. I was only six when we moved to Victorville, and I couldn’t spot our exact house on Yucca Avenue. I narrowed it down to a few which were all alike. A typical 1950’s single family subdivision with single-story ranch-style homes, the backyards backing up to the parking lot of Victor Valley High School. I remember the adventure of my brother and me camping out in the backyard, snug in our sleeping bags underneath the stars. The memory is marred, or should I say forever etched, by the hoodlums in the parking lot throwing stones at us and forcing us to skedaddle to the safety of our bedroom.

Returning to My Childhood Years, Part 1

Lompoc, California
February 2 to 6, 2010

Vandenberg Village as viewed from Harris Grade

I returned to Lompoc, the hometown of my teenage years. Some tasks still needed to be done before I set off on my plan-to-be-year-long cross-country travels: placating my mother of my safety as I wandered around, storing items that I did not want sitting in a mini-storage unit in Reno, and completing paperwork so I could travel without worry of those pesky little things like health insurance.

Although I was fortunate in comparison to other Air Force brats as to all of the moving that we did in tow with our dads, I still settled oh so shortly in five places and ten homes by the time I was 15. It was by luck of the United States Air Force that I ended up in Lompoc, California, and I consider our final family resting place as my hometown:  Vandenberg Village, a classic 1960's subdivision just northwest of Lompoc.

Take Me Out to the (Spring) Ball Game

Tucson, Arizona
March 4, 2010

It is still the season of winter, an Arizona winter which is like a Lompoc summer. The groundhog Punxsutawney Phil may try to hasten an early spring by not seeing his shadow, but the beginning of Major League Baseball spring training is a sure sign that spring is just around the corner. Looking over my list of things I've wanted to do for a long while, there was #64 - Attend a major league baseball game on the opening day of spring training. Tucson Electric Park was the venue, Section 121 / Row 6 / Seat 15 was my seat, and the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks of the Cactus League were the teams.

For the opening spring game of the local Diamondbacks, I expected a larger crowd but only around half of the 11,500 seats were filled on this warm and sunny day. Being a school day and not yet Spring Break, there were not many families and children in attendance. There was an older tinge to the crowd with lots of retirees including a flock of RV snowbirds from the northern states and Canada as far away as Nova Scotia.

In Search of Huckleberry Pie

Whitefish, Montana
August 20, 2010

For the past few days, my partner-in-crime-for-dessert and I came across quite a few mentions of the huckleberry in our travels. Which was kind of strange since I thought a huckleberry was a made-up fruit so that Mark Twain and cartoon characters would have a name. When I heard the word huckleberry, I pictured in my mind Huckleberry Finn and Huckleberry Hound. I even thought the phrase "I'm your huckleberry" (meaning I'm the right person for the job) couldn't have anything to do with a fruit hanging off a bush.

On our hike to the Grinnel and Salamander glaciers on the east side of Glaciers National Park, Ranger Bob gave us a botany lesson which uncovered the mystery of huckleberries. He pointed out to the panting group of hikers a bush by the side of the trail, a bush blushing with the fruit of the huckleberry. With a park ranger giving us comfort that we would not be poisoned by the huckleberry, the hikers grabbed the berries off the bush and slipped them into our mouths. My partner and I tried to figure out the taste of the huckleberry before we continued hiking. My ruling: like a blueberry, not as juicy and a little bit more tart. Something I could have again although I probably couldn't enjoy many at the same sitting.

Exercising the Right Side of the Brain

Sarasota and St. Petersburg, Florida
April 16, 2010

If you were going to test my brain and how it thinks, you would learn that my mode of thinking is definitely on the left side: logical, sequential, rational, analytical, objective, looks at parts rather than the whole. No surprise there, given that my top role models when I was a child were Spock (of Star Trek fame) and Sherlock Holmes. I soon came to realize the right side of my brain needed to be expanded, and I have exercised it as much as I could by the choices I make. Those choices include visiting art museums every once in a while.

The Tampa Bay area offered me several opportunities to exercise the right side of my brain. I first went to Sarasota for a day trip to the Ringling museums. The Ringling compound hosts the historic Asolo Theater, the Ringling Circus Museum, and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art housed in the Ca' d'Zan Mansion. The Asolo Theater took me to 18th century Italy to a classic opera theater, and the Ringling Circus Museum took me to the 19th century when my ancestor Martin Van Buren Bates and his future wife Anna Swann were attractions in the circus. I saw a photograph of Anna but not my great-great-great uncle.