Made it to Maryland! Drive Gently, Everyone

Milestone #1: Maryland State Line. I estimate that I reached this milestone around 9/21/09, having walked 44.6 miles. In addition to being the boundary between Maryland and Delaware, this is the famous Mason-Dixon line. Generally thought of as the border between the North and the South, it was surveyed in the 1760s by Mr. Charles Mason and Mr. Jeremiah Dixon to settle a border dispute and determine once and for all the boundaries between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Not sure exactly where Delaware fits into this, but basically the Calverts of Maryland and the Penns of Pennsylvania both claimed to have been given parts of the land by the king of England, and apparently there was actually armed violence over this issue. Recent GPS data shows that Mason and Dixon, while accurate to within an inch in some places, were off by as much as 800 feet in others. Hopefully we can all live with this without breaking out our muskets.

The part of the line that runs North-South and separates Maryland and Delaware is 83 miles long. The part that separates Md and Pa is 233 miles long. The line is marked with 300-600 pound stones placed at one mile intervals. Every fifth mile is marked with a “crown stone” which has the Calvert coat of arms on one side and the Penn coat of arms on the other.

The Maryland State welcome signs used to say "Drive Gently" back in the old days. Apparently they don't anymore if that picture above is representative. But let's all drive gently anyway, so as not to scare any virtual walkers and their dogs.