How did the Mason Dixon line come to be?
The famous line is named for Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the two men who began to mark it on the map. The first section was surveyed 200 years ago to mark the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Later the Mason Dixon line was Extended to the Mississippi River and beyond. Andy’s readers often wonder how the jig saw boundaries of our states were settled. One of these tricky problems was solved by the Mason Dixon line. Early in the 1700s there were boundary disputes between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Both claimed a strip of land about 40 miles wide. This disputed land was between parallels 39 and 40. Latitudes are parallel lines that run East and west around the globe. The two young colonies agreed to settle the matter with a boundary to be charted by trained surveyors. In 1760 they began to pace out the exact line, but the work was very slow. They sent for two expert surveyors from England., and in 1763 Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon began to mark the boundary between Mar
