Locational Boundary

1. Locational Boundary
2. Locational Boundary Example
3. Locational Boundary Definition
4. Definitional Boundary Example

Really easy to use and mark up the property boundary. First time to need this service and found the staff very helpful with assisting the purchase of two plans, a Location and a Block plan. Mr Stafford Allen. Easy to get the map using the postcode. The Mississippi River would be an example of a locational boundary dispute due to the fact that it has changed and the boundary's original intention was called into question. Emissions result from a variety of activities, like heating and cooling buildings, traveling to meetings, or shipping products to consumers. Direct (scope 1) emissions are emissions within a company’s organizational boundary from sources that the company owns or controls, like business travel in a company car or the combustion of fuel in the company’s boilers and furnaces. Locational Boundary Disputes: Definition. Is when the definition is not in dispute but the interpretation is. Saudi Arabia and Yemen/Oman/UAE: Term. Receptor Grids, Terrain, and Locational Data Page 1 of 7 Date: 11/12/13, Revision: 0 When conducting an ambient air quality impact analysis, the applicant is required to determine the impact that each emission source will have beyond the facility’s property boundary. Refined air quality.

Michael D. Sublett and Frederick H. Walk

Ask a real estate broker to list the threemost important determinants of thevalue of an urban dwelling or commercial site, and you are likely to hear thisamazingly simple answer: location, location,and location. Illinois is located in theMidwest, with only a thin line separating itfrom neighboring states. Like every otherfixed feature on the earth's surface, theIllinois boundary really has two locationalcharacteristics. First, and most obvious, isits absolute location — a series of pointsprecisely definable in terms of some reference system such as latitude and longitude.Second, but equally important, is its relativelocation — a concept that requires us tothink of a boundary's connections with itssurroundings. Such connections, of course,can and often do change with the passageof time.

ABSOLUTE LOCATION
The enabling legislation that Congresspassed in April 1818 making Illinois statehood possible included a lengthy descriptionof the boundaries that would define Illinoisas a distinct entity. That same boundarydescription found its way into the first(1818), second (1848), and third (1870)Illinois constitutions to confirm the area thatIllinois claimed. Only in the fourth constitution (1970), the most recent, did authorsfeel secure enough to omit the traditionalboundary recital. All those descriptionsbegin their counterclockwise circumnavigation of the state at the same spot — theconfluence of the Wabash and Ohio rivers(Figure 1).

Eastern Boundary
For most of its length, the easternboundary separates Illinois from Indiana, astate that entered the Union two yearsahead of Illinois. The boundary follows themiddle of the Wabash River north from themouth of the Wabash to a point approximately fifty miles north of Vincennes,Indiana, at which the southward flowingriver crosses the meridian that runs throughthe site of the old Vincennes courthouse.

That meridian, undeclared in the nineteenth-century boundary descriptions, lies 87 °(degrees) 30' (minutes) west of theGreenwich Meridian. Oddly enough, from1818 until the United States adoptedGreenwich as its prime meridian in the1880s, the Vincennes courthouse wouldhave been only 10° 30' West Longitude, asWashington, D.C., for decades marked theofficial prime meridian for America.

The Illinois-Indiana line stretchesstraight north from the Wabash meridianintersection to the northwest corner of theHoosier State, which means the lineextends a few miles out in Lake Michigan.At that corner the line turns eastward alonga parallel, 41° 50' North Latitude, until itreaches the centerline of Lake Michigan.Irregular and conforming to the points thatconstitute the lake's centerline, the easternboundary — where it separates Illinois fromthe state of Michigan — terminates wherethe parallel 42° 30' North intersects the centerline. Most state maps fail to depict theeastward extension of Illinois into the lake,and thus most people fail to count Michiganamong Illinois' neighbors.

Northern Boundary
From a point on the centerline of LakeMichigan whereIllinois, Michigan,and Wisconsincome together, thenorthern portion of theIllinois stateline headswesttowardIowa, following the42° 30'parallel. Onlya few minorwavers by thenineteenth-centurysurveyors keepthat westward pathfrom being a perfectly straight line betweenLake Michigan and theMississippi. Much more

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significant, however, was the last-minuteshift in 1818 of the boundary from its intended location at 41° 44' North to 42° 30' North,a distance of approximately sixty miles. Thatdeviation from the boundary prescribed inthe Northwest Ordinance of 1787 increasedIllinois' territory by nearly 20 percent, anarea roughly equivalent in size toMassachusetts.

Western Boundary
The northern segment of the Illinoisboundary has its westerly terminus in themiddle of the Mississippi River, marking aspot where Illinois touches the borders ofboth Wisconsin and Iowa. With somenotable exceptions south of St. Louis,Missouri, the western boundary of Illinoisfollows the midline of the Mississippi southto the Ohio River. As in the case of theWabash River, the states across theMississippi — Iowa and Missouri — sharethe river equally with Illinois. The notableexceptions south of St. Louis illustrate alegal precedent adhered to in the UnitedStates that involves meandering streamsserving as boundaries. According to the RioGrande Rule, a sudden shift in a stream'spath due to natural causes leaves behindany boundaries (international, state, county,etc.) following the stream. For example, theMississippi River has cut off several of itsold loops (meanders), separating Illinoisland from Illinois and Missouri land fromMissouri, but the separated tracts remainpolitically and fiscally linked with their original owners. Similar separations and alignments have affected the lower WabashRiver.

Southern Boundary
Kentucky inherited from its parent,Virginia, jurisdiction over the entire OhioRiver — not just the south half of the river.From Cairo to the Wabash, the southernlimit of Illinois is 'the northwestern shore' ofthe Ohio. More specifically, the boundary isthe low-water mark on the northwesternshore. Kentucky defends its claim over theOhio as vigorously as a major brand ownerprotects its trademark. Illinois, as well asIndiana and Ohio, have largely failed in theirmany efforts to alter this peculiar way ofusing a river to separate two political entities.

RELATIVE LOCATION
Since statehood in December 1818, theIllinois state line's absolute location hasremained essentially constant. Relativelocation — the significance of the boundaryvis-a-vis Illinois' six neighbors as well as theperceptions that Illinoisans andoutsiders have of the boundary —has changed over time. Boundarydisputes alter our view of aboundary or a portion of it.

An Eastern Example
During the early 1970s,prompted by the now-famousgathering in rural New Yorkreferred to as Woodstock, promoters staged outdoor rock musicconcerts at numerous sitesaround the nation. Public officialssought to control the festivals, andin some cases, to prohibit them.In 1972 promoters of a proposedconcert in southwestern Indianaencountered stiff resistance fromjudges in Evansville and nearbyIndiana communities. Quick thinking by the promoters brought their ErieCanal Soda Pop Festival to a spot approximately twenty-five miles northwest ofEvansville. The site they chose covered anold meander cutoff on the Wabash River,just a mile or so south of Interstate 64(Figure 2a).

Bull Island, as locals had long called thecutoff land, lay east of the Wabash, butbecause of the Rio Grande Rule it remainedunder the jurisdiction of White County,Illinois. Festival promoters kept secret theirplans to locate at Bull Island. They hoped tobe so far into the preparation of facilitiesand ticket sales that no judge in Carmi, theseat of White County, would dare issue aninjunction forbidding the event. It appearsthat the shrewd promoters and the WhiteCounty officials recognized a splendidadvantage conferred by Bull Island's cutoffstatus: land access to the five hundred-acresite lay entirely through Indiana (Figure 3).Therefore, state police and local authoritiesfrom Indiana would share with Illinois theresponsibility for solving traffic snarls andfor closing 1-64 as 250,000 franticfans tried to reach Bull Islandover the Labor Day weekend.Suddenly a backwater segmentof the Illinois-Indiana boundaryemerged for a brief but spectacular time in the regional,even national, spotlight. In

other words, its relative location underwenta great metamorphosis before the islandreturned to obscurity.

A Northern Example
Many Chicagoland residents speak disparagingly of their neighbors to the north,referring to the Illinois-Wisconsin border asthe 'cheddar curtain.' Little do they realizethat had it not been for the territorialappetite of Nathaniel Pope, Illinois' representative in Congress at the time of statehood, the northern boundary of Illinois would have been a westward extension ofan east-west line tangent to the southern tipof Lake Michigan. If Pope had failed to persuade Congress to move Illinois' boundarynorthward to its present location, most ofCook County and all of DuPage, Kane,Lake, and McHenry counties would todaybe part of America's Dairyland.

The displaced boundary was a sorepoint for several decades after 1818.Displeasure peaked in the 1840s asWisconsin sought to convert from territorialto state status. Many Wisconsin politicianscalled for shifting the boundary back southward. Agitators stirred up settlers in thenorthernmost of Illinois counties with talk ofsecession from Illinois and affiliation withthe emerging state of Wisconsin.Frequently, residents of those northerlyIllinois counties expressed a desire to makethe switch. After all, they felt a closer bondwith Wisconsinites than with the southern-born folk who still held sway in Springfield.Officially, the dispute ended in 1848 whenWisconsin accepted the limits Congressestablished for it at the time of statehood.Unofficially, some were still griping yearslater about the loss of eighty-five hundredsquare miles of land, the Chicago portageconnection to the Mississippi Valley, and thelead mines near Galena.

A Western Example
The Mississippi River has served as apolitical boundary longer than any otherIllinois boundary, having first been assignedthe role in 1763 when the French surrendered to Great Britain their claim to landeast of the Mississippi. Major rivers like theMississippi often became boundariesbecause they appeared early on explorers'maps; but they have several drawbacks asboundaries, not the least of which is theirtendency to meander. Of all the meandercutoffs affecting Illinois, the largest by far isKaskaskia Island, just west of Chester(Randolph County) and about fifty milessouth-southeast of St. Louis (Figure 2b).

From prehistoric times into the late-nineteenth century, Kaskaskia was not anisland but rather a place where theMississippi turned sharply westward in ameander that stretched nearly bluff to bluff.Inside this meander, near the eastern bluffand beside the Kaskaskia River — a left-bank tributary of the Mississippi — Frenchsettlers established the village of Kaskaskia,which became the first capital of the newstate of Illinois. In 1881 the Mississippi, atthe height of a major flood, cut off the bigKaskaskia meander and occupied (as itdoes to this day) the lower few miles of theold Kaskaskia River channel.

Locational Boundary

Illinois has retained control of the islandthrough a lengthy series of court battles withMissouri, whose officials have looked longingly at the tax money generated by thetwenty-three thousand acres of prime bottomland now separated from the Illinoismainland by the big river. That separateness has proven a considerable inconvenience for the island's farmers and few remaining residents. Those folk, barring theuse of a boat or aircraft, must enter and exittheir Illinois island through St. Mary's,Missouri.

A Southern Example
Kentucky, Illinois' neighbor to the south,became a state in 1792. For more than twocenturies Kentuckians have worked to maintain tight control over the long and twisting

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Locational Boundary Example

northern boundary. Of course in many matters, such as navigation, Kentucky mustbow to federal regulations; but when Ohio,Indiana, or Illinois test the jurisdictionalwaters hoping to find a Kentucky weakness,the Bluegrass State comes out swinging. Atissue most often are dollars the state reapsfrom control of the Ohio River. As recentlyas January 1993, Kentucky officials wereflexing their boundary muscles in responseto an Illinois scheme to collect taxes from afloating casino tied up at Metropolis, Illinois.Then there was the matter of Dog Island(Figure 2c).

Unlike Bull Island and Kaskaskia Island,Dog Island was not the result of a meandering river. In fact, this tiny (130-acre) speckof silt and sand in the Ohio, twelve milesnortheast of Paducah, Kentucky, was noteven an island at low water, according toIllinois advocates, including Illinois' AttorneyGeneral in the 1970s, William Scott. Illinoisclaimed attachment of Dog Island to theIllinois side of the river as a peninsulawhen the Ohio was especially low. DogIsland (Peninsula?) suddenly came intoprominence in the early 1970s when theU.S. Army Corps of Engineers announcedplans to spend nearly $100 million there toimprove river navigation.The Smithland(after Smithland, Kentucky) Lock and Damproject was to span the Ohio, crossing DogIsland in the process. Both Illinois andKentucky wanted the tax benefits that thefederal money would produce as workerslabored on the project. The controversybounced all the way to the Illinois SupremeCourt and then into the federal courts.

It matters little now who actually prevailed legally at Dog Island. The SmithlandDam stretches across the river, and towslock through on their way up and down theriver. However, one thing we can state withconfidence: the courts have not heard thelast of the Ohio River jurisdiction cases, asthe relative location of that Illinois boundaryagain and again comes into question.

Locational Boundary Definition

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Definitional Boundary Example