Ride 10: 3-Corners Explore

After our pleasant ride to the 3-corners area a few days ago, several of us wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to the potential toe-rags who removed the geo-cache and flag and see if they might have merely "moved it" to the "true" 3-corners.   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Ride 10: 3-Corners Explore]

If any of you have zoomed in to a close up of Google Earth (where Utah, Nevada and Arizona are supposed to meet) you find that they don't! I can honestly say that I have never noticed a tiny bump-out glitch along the Nevada maps east side – but it's there plain as day on Google Earth.

Now why would people think that Utah, Nevada and Arizona all meet in one place? Well it's because… there's an offical stone marker, with an official bronze geo-marker medallion at the place where they are supposed to!

Why current maps don't show them meeting; why some bureaucrats told people they did; why citizens or other responsible parties quarried and engraved the stone and fire-cast the medallion and hauled it into the desert, and erected it (probably in some form of ceremony); why all this, if it wasn't true… well, I'll bet there's an interesting story in there somewhere and I'd really like to hear it!

I can just hear some pioneer equivalent of the fiends of Gold Butte telling Arizonans: "oh no, you have nothing to worry about, it won't change a thing. Believe us, the line goes right down here straight as an arrow and it won't change a thing about where you can ride – honest, you can trust us, before anything changes YOU will have the say about it!" — Yea, right!

There is nothing so insidiously destructive to society, than people in authority with vested interests masquerading as moral principles.”
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Well, IF in fact the flag and geo-cache was merely moved it couldn't have been to the North because there is no gate in the fence in that direction.

There is a gate going to the East so we followed it but shortly ran into a sheer drop off into one of the many chasims in the area. We followed a giant switchback to the south and ran across some beautiful country including patches of cryptobiotic soil on the hillside and some whole thickets of Desert Holly.

Alas! But, no geocache. In fact the "true" Three-Corners is a bit up on the side of the bluff to the northeast and nowhere even close to a trail. So if that is where someone wants to go they will need to blaze a new trail!

I fear that the US flag and almost a hundred years of 'guest registry' is lost and gone forever. Let's see… hummm… who would stand to gain politically from senseless distruction?