Drawing the Line

Author: Edwin Danson
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Wiley, 2000
Pages: 240
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: "Made famous as line between free and slave states before War Between the States. The survey establishing Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary began in 1763; halted by Indian wars 1767; continued to southwest corner 1782: marked 1784."

Behind these words, inscribed on a solitary monument in southwest Pennsylvania, lies the complex, compelling tale of the most famous surveyors’ line ever drawn. Originally created to settle an eighty-year border dispute between two aristocratic colonial families, the Mason-Dixon line not only became one of the greatest scientific achievements of its time but, nearly a century later, came to mark the monumental boundary between free and slave states.

In the first nonfiction chronicle of this ambitious undertaking, professional surveyor Edwin Danson takes us on a grand tour through a world now mostly lost to us. Drawing the Line reconstructs the making of the Mason-Dixon line, from the infamous quarrels between the patrician Baltimore family of Maryland and the powerful Penn family of Pennsylvania to the harrowing fields and forests of eighteenth-century America, where we accompany Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two young, exuberant English surveyors, as they risk their lives to resolve the epic border feud and establish a precise survey that had begun to seem "impossible for the Art of Man."

After five grueling years in which the two intrepid Englishmen faced heavy rains and freezing sleet, along with angry Indians, they finally completed their assignment. Their great boundary survey was the first and, for many years, the most ambitious geodetic survey ever conducted. It set a precedent for the precise measurement and mapping of vast land distances. In addition to surveying 325 miles of boundary lines, Mason and Dixon measured the first degree of latitude and took the first scientific gravity measurements ever recorded in America.

In ordinary language, Danson introduces us to the fascinating science of surveying, revealing for the first time in 250 years many long-lost surveying methods and finally answering the question of how Mason and Dixon succeeded where the best American surveyors had failed. Weaving revelations about surveying into an engrossing historical narrative that captures the spirit of pre-Revolutionary America, this book accomplishes for the making of the Mason-Dixon line what Dava Sobel’s Longitude did for John Harrison and the science of time measurement.

Exhaustively researched and vividly written, Drawing the Line presents a brilliant exploration of how two men solved one of the most formidable problems of eighteenth-century America–and revolutionized the way we have come to map America’s grand landscape.

Review: I liked this, but I don't think it will appeal to most people. I didn't love it. While there is a lot of history, there is also a lot of surveying specific terms and information. I'm not sure why I stuck with it. I'm stubborn and don't often give up on a book.

All in all, this wasn't what I expected.