The Americans were in charge of the initial surveying of the West Line but it is highly likely that British sappers and French Canadian axmen were also involved. As indicated in Stop 4 Poster 5 the Royal Engineers played a critical role in determining longitude at certain points along the line.
The vista was cleared to chest height for 30 feet and the inner 8 feet was cleared to the ground. Moving the markers into position was no easy task, they weighed 194 pounds each!
A flaw in the Treaty of Washington was that it made no provision for maintaining the boundary line. Once again over the next 55 years Mother Nature re-claimed what was hers and man’s hubris was transformed back into forest.
