A small bespoke benchmark disk on a concrete pillar in the woods marks the spot where the states of Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama come together. We learned about this special place on David Carroll's Chatanooga Radio/TV blog: (
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"How to stand in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama at the same time
David Carroll December 28, 2015
When I was growing up, WDEF-TV called its newscast “Tri-State Report.” I always liked that title, it was self-explanatory. Folks like me, in the northeastern corner of Alabama, got their news from Chattanooga, as did my neighbors in northwest Georgia, just a skip and a hop away. Somehow over the years, the term “tri-state area” was replaced by “the Tennessee Valley,” although I don’t know who made that decision. I guess it sounded more tourist-friendly.
Still, I’m proud of our three adjoining states. I love something about all of them. Yet until late 2015, I never entertained the idea of standing in all three states at the same time. I guess somewhere in the back of my head, I realized there was a border where the three states joined each other. I just never bothered to find out exactly where it was, until now. Read on, enjoy the pics and video, and I’ll share directions at the end of the story.
My friend Bill Peterson told me I needed to take a hike. He had just returned from a field trip in which he found the marker that commemorates the exact spot where Alabama meets Georgia, which meets Tennessee. He was kind enough to send his story, and those of other explorers who made the journey.
As you know, there was renewed interest in the Tennessee-Georgia border a couple of years ago. Some Georgia state legislators claimed the state line was marked incorrectly, too far to the south. This had been done in 1818 by James Camak. He was a surveyor, hired by the state of Georgia to settle a dispute over state lines. (Georgia became a state in 1788, while Tennessee established statehood eight years later). Camak, of course, used primitive equipment. As surveyor Bart Crattie told NPR in 2008, the folks in the 1800’s used “the heavens and stars” to mark the line.
There seems to be little doubt among modern-day experts that the marker is about a mile off the 35th parallel, which according to legal statute, is the actual line. It should be, they say, right in the middle of Nickajack Lake.
Yes, all that water, just out of Georgia’s reach. But as currently drawn, it is a 200-year-old line, and unlikely to budge any time soon.
So in 2013, Georgia lawmakers claimed the true boundary line would enable Georgians to lay claim to Tennessee’s abundant water supply. Despite the outcry, and some well-researched evidence that seems to prove them right, the state line hasn’t moved. Apparently, the courts are reluctant to start moving state lines that have existed for two hundred years. As surveyor Crattie told NPR, “Lord, if you started changing property lines, it would just be chaos.”
About ten years ago, some interested parties found the spot, and were kind enough to create a small monument, and then drive it into the ground for all to see. The key word is “small,” about four inches in diameter.
Considerately, they placed bright orange surveyor’s tape on some trees to keep people like me from wandering off the trail. Even with their help, I pretty much stumbled on it, thanks to a white paper towel held in place by a rock. I removed the rock, and there it was!
For the first time in my life, I was truly a tri-state guy. My left foot was in Tennessee, and the big toe of my right foot was in Georgia. The heel of my right foot was in Alabama. It was sort of like being a Volunteer Bama Dawg.
I was standing in one of only 38 such spots in the USA, where three states are so connected on dry land (23 are in the middle of rivers, streams or lakes). I’m told that more than 200,000 tourists a year visit the Four Corners monument, where the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado all meet. I doubt more than a handful visit our little triangle, but I’m glad I did.
I was fortunate to go on a dry, comfortable December day. I didn’t have to deal with mud, weeds, poison ivy, snakes or other critters. If you would like to stand in all three states, here are the directions:
From I-24, take exit 161 (Haletown/New Hope). Take TN-156 west (a curvy, winding road) 3.8 miles, then turn left on Macedonia Church Road. Go 7/10 of a mile, then turn right on Huckabee Road (it isn’t marked, but it is just before you see several mailboxes on the left). Go 3/10 of a mile and park just beyond the Stateline Cemetery. You’ll see the beginning of a trail straight ahead. Walk about 50-75 yards (estimated) and you’ll see orange surveyors tape on some trees. The marker stands about a foot off the ground, and lies just ahead of a natural stone formation."
More on this monument can be found here, on the website of the Gainesville GA Tines: (
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Stolen stone returns home minus fanfare
By Johnny Vardeman
POSTED: March 20, 2011 1:00 a.m.
Considerable commotion arose a few years ago when some Georgia legislators wanted to claim land north of the state's boundary with Tennessee so Georgia could get water from the Tennessee River.
That was in the middle of a drought and the dispute over use of water in Lake Lanier that still hasn't been settled among Georgia, Alabama and Florida. Tennessee didn't have a dog in that fight until some in Georgia began to lust over its river just across the state line.
Some Georgia legislators argued that surveyors miscalculated the location of the 35th parallel, which was supposed to mark Georgia's northern boundary as set by King George II in 1732. The boundary has been in question over the years, Georgia even tussling with North Carolina over its line. But high courts usually decide the horse was already out of the barn, and long-established lines can't be rearranged.
In 1811, Georgia Gov. D.B. Mitchell hired Andrew Ellicott to fix the Georgia-North Carolina boundary. Through numerous hardships in the then-wild land, Ellicott marked a rock on the eastern side of the Chattooga River where the 35th parallel supposedly crossed. It turned out, however, to be 18 miles south of where Georgia thought it was. That marker is known as Ellicott's Rock.
In the meantime, North and South Carolina marked another rock when they were surveying their boundaries. When Georgia and North Carolina got together again in 1819 on their boundaries, they used the wrong rock to mark them.
That brings us to James Camak, who really takes the heat for missing the elusive 35th parallel as it relates to the Georgia-Tennessee line. Camak, on the second try to mark the boundaries in 1826, set a stone that was supposed to mark the corner boundaries of Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.
A mathematician, Camak had no modern tools that today's surveyors might use. Instead, his guides were stars, compasses, chains and apparently some inexact mathematical charts. Congress had designated the 35th parallel in 1796 as the southern boundary of the new state of Tennessee, but Camak apparently missed it by a mile because the 35th parallel actually runs in the middle of the Tennessee River at some points. The marker Camak set was called the Camak stone in the surveyor's honor.
Curiously, in the summer of 2007, a few months after Georgia had flirted with trying to move its border with Tennessee a mile or so north to raid the river, the Camak stone went missing. There was speculation that some passionate Georgian had snuck the marker north to where he or she thought it should have been. No clues emerged to its disappearance.
Earlier, this month, however, with no fanfare and only silence from south of the border, the Camak stone was replaced. The Alabama surveyors who placed the stone at the same spot from where it had been pilfered said it had nothing to do with the dispute over water in the Tennessee River.
Bill Morton, who wrote a history of Georgia's boundaries, was quoted in the Chattanooga Times-Free Press as saying, "Tennessee and Georgia should be doing this ... because it's so important, legally and everything else. But Alabama's doing it."
No Georgia official attended the ceremony re-setting the Camak stone, but neither did anybody from the state contest its being replaced in the same location. Farris Cadle of Garden City, an expert on state boundaries and author of "Georgia Land Surveying History and Law," commented, "It is significant that Georgia made no issue of the location, showing that all the ruckus that was raised ... about moving Georgia's north boundary to the 35th parallel was pointless."
A Lookout Mountain surveyor, Bart Crattie, is credited with bringing attention to the flawed Tennessee-Georgia border, through an article in a surveyors' magazine four years ago. He noted that Alabama was a good neutral party to lead the effort to replace the stone.
Author Morton said somebody should have brought wine to christen the new marker, the Chattanooga paper reported.
Robert Cagle, an officer of the Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia Land Surveyors Historical Society, countered that moonshine would be more appropriate because some historians say that mountain spirits could have been the culprit in the incorrect placement of the stone in the first place.
Johnny Vardeman is retired editor of The Times. His column appears Sundays and on gainesvilletimes.com."