Boundary Markers: Border Monuments 📍

Nations have been marking their territories since there have been territories to mark (📍Bonkers Borders Series)

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Border Monuments

(Boundary Markers)

Whats with those posts of people jumping across the border?

These are boundary monuments – they come in all shapes and sizes and are found all over the world. Some in China date from the first century and new ones are installed through today. The one in the meme is Peace Arch Park between Washington and British Columbia. Another popular one in posts is Kora La between Nepal and Tibet err China.

Boundary markers like these are there for the obvious purpose of defining the border visually on the ground for regular folk like us, particularly in places without obvious natural borders like rivers or mountains.

They’re not often exactly accurate, bc it was nearly impossible before GPS (The US-Canada border markers are a couple hundred feet off in lots of places, making a lot of the border more of a zigzag than the straight line it’s supposed to be). And Also bc newer ones nowadays are meant just as much for this guy to jump across and take a photo.

Another interesting tidbit: the US Canada border is maintained by a dual country agency called the IBC, whose main job it is to keep clear a 20 foot wide line through 1350 miles of wilderness that you can see from a plane. They’ve been doing that since 1908.