Point of Beginning
At the eastern edge of East Liverpool, a modest roadside monument opens onto a national story: the effort to measure federal western lands using a repeatable grid.
A new way to divide land
The Land Ordinance of 1785 set out a framework of six-mile-square townships and one-mile-square sections. Thomas Hutchins began the first baseline survey here on September 30, 1785.
The marker and the river
The surviving monument commemorates the starting point rather than occupying the original stake’s position. Its inscription places that point 1,112 feet south. National Park Service documentation describes the original tract as submerged after changes to the river.
A place remembered
An archive photograph records the September 30, 1960 dedication. Later, Kent State students and community partners worked to improve the small roadside site in 2015.