This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but that does not automatically make it easy to draw, especially when government specifications are involved. David B. Sears found that out the hard way in 1852 when he was appointed a surveyor general and asked to lay out the boundary between Iowa and the soon-to-be state of Minnesota.
Sears had already built the first power dam on the Mississippi River between the Iowa shore and Rock Island, and had founded the town of Moline, but he was a restless sort and welcomed the new adventure.
Surveying Iowa's northern boundary seemed simple. It was to be a straight line due west from where the Iowa River met the Mississippi, to the Sioux and the Missouri rivers. Unfortunately, there were specifications, including the makeup of the surveying party.
From late winter to early spring of 1852, Sears assembled his party at Moline. Along with the best and latest surveying equipment, there was a crew of 43 men: Captain Andrew Talcott, chief surveyor, and 14 men from the surveyors corps in Washington D.C., along with chain men, flag men, monument builders, a doctor, a hunter, an interpreter, teamsters, choppers, four cooks and Sears' own 14 year old son. The party included two Congressmen's sons and another from English nobility, sent by their parents to make men of themselves.
The survey itself began after the spring thaw. Specifications called for a sod monument three feet on all sides every five miles and a granite boulder to mark every 50 miles. In many places, the granite had to be laboriously hauled from miles away. The line had to be late at night in order to use the planets as true guides, a problem on cloudy evenings. The whole of the line went through hostile Sioux tribal lands. The surveying party's food and supplies were often stolen.
David Sears and his surveyors took a little over a year to complete their survey of Iowa's northern boundary. The timing was the only thing that did not meet specifications. Sears' government orders had called for him to take two full years.
Rock Island Lines is underwritten by the Illinois Humanities Council and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, with additional funding from Humanities Iowa, the Iowa Arts Council, and Augustana College, Rock Island.
