The Four Corners monument sits on the geographic point at which four states - Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah - meet. To be honest, given the American love of straight lines, I regard it as something of a miracle that this sort of thing doesn't happen all over the country - take a quick look at a map, and it quickly becomes clear that the United States must be one of the few places on Earth that hasn't spent its entire history squabbling about boundary lines. Everywhere else on the planet, the line between one country or state and the next tends to wander aimlessly through mountains, around lakes or even, sometimes, around a particularly important tree that one side refuses to give up - so it really is something of a wonder that the United States has managed to slice itself up into bite size portions without anybody whinging about losing that nice bit of shrubbery to the left of the Post Office. Perhaps they had men standing about with guns to quickly put down any dissent - in many places, it seems, "men with guns" is almost a dictionary definition of America.

Anyway, I digress. For a long time, the actual positioning of the monument which sits on the four corners boundary has been in dispute. Not by anybody important enough to do anything about it, you understand - just by the sort of people who like to get up in the morning and immediately make a list of things to complain about before bed time. It is said, by those with too much time on their hands, that the monument is anything between a few hundred yards and three miles away from where it should be, because the surveyors who placed it there made a mistake. This argument is usually put forward by television executives and newspaper moguls in an attempt to create sensational headlines, and is based on the same sort of flawed thinking that results in 6 percent of the population of the United States and 25 percent of Brits believing that a misplaced shadow proves that the moon landings were filmed in somebody's shed. In fact, at the time of the original survey in 1875, the surveyors based their calculations on the Washington Meridian - the standard at the time - whereas now we use an entirely different standard called the Prime Meridian which is offset slightly from the original, so the positioning is in fact far more accurate than anyone gives it credit for. Add to this the fact that surveyors of the late 19th Century didn't generally have access to iPhones, the Internet and high tech geographic positioning software, and perhaps you might see why we should cut them a little slack. Considering they managed to pretty much nail the exact position at which four states meet using not much more than chalk and a piece of string, I rather think we should be giving them medals rather than pointing at any slight discrepancies in their calculations. Let's face it, even if they were a little off, they still got it within a few hundred yards, which, given the tools of the time, quite conclusively shows that they knew what they were doing - I'm pretty sure that if the job had been given to me, I would've ended up placing the Four Corners Monument in the middle of India. All of this complaining is rather academic, anyway, to be honest. The simple fact is that whether or not the original survey placed the monument in the right place is totally irrelevant, because the moment they gave Ulysses S. Grant's government of the day the co-ordinates they became legally binding - so it's probably just as well that I wasn't put in charge, or the US would currently be trying to claim India as their own.

Four Corners, as is the way with many things in America, is about as flamboyant as it could possibly be. I remember, back in Australia, stopping at major territorial boundaries which were marked by nothing more than a wonky pole stuck in the ground and a sign pointing to a portable toilet surrounded by flies. Here, the only thing stopping them putting up a huge neon billboard that can be seen from space is the fact that it might dazzle the pilots of overflying aircraft. The nearest highway to Four Corners is in New Mexico, so the easiest way to get here is by following the cleverly named "Four Corners Road" from US Route 160 which ironically only skirts the corner of New Mexico on its way between Arizona and Colorado. This is why, in case I get complaints from the other three states, I have chosen to head this entry "Four Corners, New Mexico", due to the fact that the main route in requires driving through that great state, even if only for a moment. The Monument itself consists of a ridiculously large granite disk embedded in the ground, on which the seals of the four states are themselves embedded at the four corners - as far as you can have four corners on a disk. Surrounding the monument, state flags, as well as the flags of the Navajo and Ute tribal nations, flap proudly in the wind, and a bronze disk at the exact centre point is surrounded by the words "Four States here meet in freedom under God", with two words in each state - so nice to see that they've even managed to crowbar a little religion into the equation.

Rather strangely, as the Four Corners Monument also serves as a rest stop for those travelling the vast distances between the East and West coasts on Route 160, an entry fee is charged to actually look at the monument. This fact is made even more bizarre by the fact that anyone with half a brain could easily circumvent the fee by simply walking out into the desert to one side or the other and looking at it from a distance - although, of course, this doesn't allow for jumping around excitedly like a five year old shouting "I'm in Arizona, Now I'm in New Mexico. Look, now I'm in Colorado. No, sorry, I'm in Utah" until somebody forces you to stop by punching you hard in the face. According to Wikipedia, which may or may not be making it up as it goes along, people come from hundreds of miles away to play Twister, engage in a passionate embrace, or both, across four states. Quite what it is that people find so romantic about sitting on a state line in the middle of the desert as opposed to, for example, travelling to Greenland and gazing up at the Northern Lights, is a mystery to me, but to each their own. You can't wander across the road and buy a shawl from a Native American Navajo while admiring the beauty of the Aurora Borealis, of course, but I don't think I'd let that worry me too much.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.