Boundaries Settled
The exact spot where Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia met is not easy to see on the ridge line below. Nor was it easy to determine.
In 1665 Great Britain's King Charles II declared his Virginia colony was to be separated from his Carolina colony by a line drawn at latitude 36° 30'. Surveyors started at the Atlantic Ocean in 1728 to run the line westward to the Mississippi. Decades of boundary disputes followed, first between Virginia and North Carolina. Later Tennessee and Kentucky joined the fray. The most rugged segment of the old Carolina-Virginia boundary - here in the Cumberland Mountains - was not finally resolved until 1803.
Before 1792 Kentucky was the westernmost county of Virginia. The Cumberland ridge top was chosen as the new state line by the Kentucky and Virginia boundary commissioners in 1798.
Until 1790 Tennessee was part of North Carolina. Commissioners from Virginia and Tennessee set the final line here on "White Top Mountain" in December 1803.
Here, you are in Virginia.
Marker can be reached from Pinnacle Road, on the right when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
