Four Corners Furtherance: The monument is closed and in the wrong spot

Clark Griswold: Roy, can I call you Roy? Have you even driven your whole family cross-country?
Roy Walley: Oh, hell yes. Once I drove all of them to Florida. The smell coming out of the back seat was terrible.
Clark: I know that smell, Roy, but what if you had driven all that way and Florida was closed?
Roy Walley: Closed? Uh, they don't close Florida.
National Lampoon's Vacation, 1983.

Walley World closes, and so does the Four Corners Monument.

Man, what a letdown! Not only am I only a third of my way into Four Corners Furtherance, I won't be showing you the Four Corners Monument, because it's under construction. I was aware of that, but I had read that it was still open on the weekends. While at Mesa Verde National Park, we ran into a couple who told us that they couldn't get to the monument--the road was blocked by a chain link fence.

Four Corners of course is the only place where four states meet--the states are Utah, Arizona, New Mexico---and Colorado. And that's where the Four Corners Monument lies, in Colorado. You see, according to recent GPS surveys, the marker is 2.5 miles west of where it should be. The monument is closed. And it's in the wrong spot. It's easy to understand why Santa Claus stiffs the Four Corners every year.

There were six cars parked in front of the half-mile long driveway that leads to the site, but not so many people. I quickly ascertained that some people decided to climb the fence and--Damn you all!--see the monument and take a picture of their loved ones with a limb in four different states.

But these lawbreakers wasted their effort--the monument itself was surrounded by another chain link fence, a more imposing one, which one chatty trespasser told me was impossible to climb. Besides, the photogenic Four Corners spot was covered in plastic.

We arrived there on US Route 160 after leaving Mesa Verde National Park, which is part of the Trail of the Ancients Byway. Close to the monument it's Colorado on the right and New Mexico on the left.

The Four Corners Monument is managed by the Navajo Nation.

Next: Monument Valley

Earlier posts:

• More of Mesa Verde National Park
• Mesa Verde National Park and the Ancients
• Gerald R. Ford Memorial Highway
• Flatlanders battle the Rocky Mountains and a car gets altitude sickness
• Buffalo Bill's gravesite
• Buffalo Bill's Scout's Rest Ranch
• My rattlesnake sighting