Fairfax Stone Historical Monument State Park is a

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...

state park commemorating the Fairfax Stone, a surveyor's marker and

boundary stone A boundary marker, border marker, boundary stone, or border stone is a robust physical marker that identifies the start of a land boundary or the change in a boundary, especially a change in direction of a boundary. There are several other t ...

at the source of the North Branch of the Potomac River. The original stone was placed on October 23, 1746 to settle a boundary dispute between

Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (22 October 16939 December 1781), was a Scottish peer. He was the son of Thomas Fairfax, 5th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, and Catherine Colepeper, daughter of Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper. The ...

and the English Privy Council concerning the

Northern Neck The Northern Neck is the northernmost of three peninsulas (traditionally called "necks" in Virginia) on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in the Commonwealth of Virginia (along with the Middle Peninsula and the Virginia Peninsula). The P ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. It determined the proprietorship and boundaries of a large tract of mostly unsurveyed land in the English colonies of

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

and

Park

Fairfax Stone Historical Monument, part of a four-acre West Virginia state park, is six miles north of Thomas, West Virginia. The site is sparsely developed, lacking any buildings or restroom facilities.

History

The exact boundaries of the " Northern Neck Land Grant" (later called the "Fairfax Grant") had been undetermined since it was first contrived in 1649 by the then-exiled King Charles II. John Savage and his survey party had located the site of the source of the North Branch of the Potomac River (the northern boundary of the tract) in 1736, but had made no attempt to establish the western boundaries.Wayland, John (1925), ""Special Note", In: ''The Fairfax Line: Thomas Lewis's Journal of 1746''; Footnotes and index by John Wayland, Newmarket, Virginia: The Henkel Press (1925 publication), pp. 86-88. A 1746 survey by Colonel Peter Jefferson (

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...

's father) and Thomas Lewis resulted in both the placement of the Fairfax Stone as well as the establishment of a line of demarcation known as the " Fairfax Line", extending from the Stone to the south-east and ending at the source of the

Rappahannock River The Rappahannock River is a river in eastern Virginia, in the United States, approximately in length.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 It traverses the entir ...

, a distance of . In 1748,

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...

, along with frontiersman and noted surveyor David Morgan of Virginia, had surveyed the area again. Their job was to establish the northernmost boundary of Lord Fairfax's land and estate, on the present day borders of Maryland and West Virginia. They would be the ones to place the Fairfax Stone where it is today for a consummation of their hard work. The North Branch of the Potomac River initially heads west from its source at the Fairfax Stone before curving north and then generally flowing east toward

Chesapeake Bay The Chesapeake Bay ( ) is the largest estuary in the United States. The Bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula (including the parts: the Eastern Shore of Maryland / ...

. For this reason, the Stone is only a county corner of

counties rather than part of the state's border with

, an issue that was only resolved when the Supreme Court ruled against Maryland in 1910 in '' Maryland v. West Virginia'', determining that Maryland would only go westward up the Potomac far enough to meet a point where a line north from the Fairfax Stone would cross that branch of the Potomac. Until the ruling, the boundary of Maryland was indeterminate. Three

counties—

Grant Grant or Grants may refer to: Places *Grant County (disambiguation) Australia * Grant, Queensland, a locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia United Kingdom * Castle Grant United States * Grant, Alabama * Grant, Inyo County, ...

, Preston and Tucker— share the boundary marked by the Fairfax Stone (West Virginia having seceded from

during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

Fate of the original stone

The original Fairfax Stone, in accordance with common surveying practices of the era, was most likely simply a natural, unmarked rock selected from among the outcroppings in the area. Legal boundary disputes between

and

caused the latter to relocate the stone in 1833 after the site had been lost to memory.Wayland (1925), ''Op. cit.'', pg 88. The stone was still intact in 1859 when one Lieutenant Melcher found it again and reran the "Fairfax Line" on behalf of the two states. The Stone was gone by 1909, however, having been carried away by vandals. There have been six Fairfax Stones, each one replacing the last owing to weathering or vandalism. The current stone is a six-ton rock with a flat face, on which is inlaid a historical plaque detailing the stone's significance. Next to it is the 1910 stone. The present six-ton Fairfax Stone was dedicated on October 5, 1957.Conley, Phil and Boyd B. Stutler (1966), ''West Virginia, Yesterday and Today'', 4th Edition, Charleston, West Virginia: Education Foundation, Inc., pg 24.

Plaque legend

References

External links