The Louisiana Texas Borderlands Research Papers (original) (raw)
In our connected world, the task of finding a single point on the Earth can be done with remarkable precision and speed. Want an aerial photo, a satellite image, or historical photos? No problem. Understanding how that was done in the... more
In our connected world, the task of finding a single point on the Earth can be done with remarkable precision and speed. Want an aerial photo, a satellite image, or historical photos? No problem. Understanding how that was done in the early 1800s absent all our modern tools is the focus of this work. The main "character" in this book is one of the most disputed locations in Texas history-the spot at which the thirty-second parallel of latitude intersects the middle of the Sabine River. From that point of intersection with a meandering river, a boundary line was defined in 1811 going due north, separating the state of Louisiana from Spanish Texas. Due to the nature of the instruments available at the time to locate that parallel, the east-west meander of the river, and the absolute wilderness of the river bottoms, a half-mile error north or south of the parallel could add or remove hundreds of square miles to the territory.