No, it's not for any of the obvious reasons one would conjecture, such as being caught trying to smuggle drugs, money, food, tobacco, guns, booze or cats over the border. We will always remember this as the "Camera Eating Border Monument" and this is why:
While approaching the Canada-US border we spied a border monument by the side of the road. I asked B to get out her camera and try to take a couple of shots of it as we were approaching.
"Click - click - It's out of focus! #%&##$%!!! The @#$^^#& camera won't focus!"
Right then and there the lens of our Canon G12 seized up and has never moved since. We quickly got the trusty Nikon into action and managed to get a couple more shots before we were forced to move on. On arriving in Houlton, just a mile down I-95, our first stop was at the Houlton Wally World camera department in search of a replacement.
Other than that, our border crossing into Maine was completely without incident.
The boundary between Maine and New Brunswick was settled by
The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, with the first border monuments erected along the border in 1843 by the International Boundary Commission(IBC). This monument, inscribed "
Treaty 1925", appears to be MON 19B. MON 19 and MON 19A are on the south side of Highway 95. The IBC map shows MON19B to be further north of the highway than is this one, but it could be no other, as they are placed in numerical order. Either their map is inaccurate or the monument has been relocated to place it closer to the highway.
This monument, a stone obelisk, is not to be found in either the Canadian (NRCAN) or U.S. (NGS) database, the nearest being MON 18, south of the MON19 group. See the
NGS Data Sheet for more info.