Looks like it once was US border.
probablty ok to take it- we're not using our border anymore.....:-$
Last week while attending a board meeting of our local historical society one of our more active members approached me to discuss an idea he had. He had discovered in some old book the fact that in 1902 U.S.C. & G.S. had established a stone marker about two miles from our museum on what was then the County Poor Farm. Today, the marker is still on County-owned land a few hundred feet from the construction and demoliton landfill operated by the County. His goal was to have me do whatever would be needed to actually find this stone so that we could dig it up and move it into the museum. He soon discovered that my thinking and his thinking did not align.
What I enjoyed was the copy of the item about the placing of the stone. "The stone is about 2 1/2 feet long and its top is 6" by 8". The extreme west point of the west chimney on the poor house used as mark bears four degrees 52.9 minutes east of true south. Apex of cupola on Catholic Church (distant about 7 miles) bears 36 degrees 32.3 minutes east of true south. West gable of John Blaine's barn, about 1 1/2 mile distant, bears 82 degrees 20.7 minutes east of true south."
All this time we've been fussing over due north and along comes this Government description using due south. Must have been one of those upsidedown Kiwis or Aussies.
So how many of the sights still exist?
The poor farm house and the Blaine barn are definitely gone. The church cupola is a different story. The church was jacked up and a basement built beneath it in the 1930's. I believe a different belltower was erected around that time as well. About seven years ago the top section of the belltower (the wooden part) was removed by hurricane force winds. It took two or three years but it was finally replaced. So the original cupola is definitely gone. The really amazing part is jacking up the church in the 1930's as this is a large stone building. Hundreds of screw jacks were employed along with hundreds of workers and a large drum. A fraction of a turn was made on each beat of the drum so as to keep everyone working together and everything level.
http://www.kansastravel.org/stfrancischurch.htm
The photo of the church at sunset is much older than the first photo in the link. The belltower is on the south end of the church. Notice the section of the west wall near the left end of the photo. That section does not have a window and the stone work appears to be different. That is because there was a large monastery erected to the northwest of the church and it was directly connected to the church in that area. The monastery was razed in the early 1980's thus requiring the patching of the west wall. I think the monastery closed at some time in the 1960's. The nunnery across the road continued until the parochial school closeby was merged into the public school system in 1966.
I suspected it might be the St. Paul church. Went by it several times and had the story told to me by my supervisors. I regret never actually going into the building. If I ever get back there it's on my list to see.
“History is a vast early warning system.” Norman Cousins