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