Carolinas’ border dispute resolved

Trees might live a long time, but they do die — and as it turns out, state borders can die with them.

The original state line between North and South Carolina was noted with glaze marks on trees roughly every mile along the border nearly 300 years ago.

“Trees don’t live forever, and so — certainly the ones that were marked in 1735 to 1737 — they’re all dead,” said Stephen Kelly, a visiting professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. “And when they died, they took the exact location of the boundary with them.”

A joint boundary commission from North and South Carolina has been working to redefine and reestablish the official state border since 1993, and now they are preparing to present the finalized border to both state governments in January.

But the shift is not without consequences, as a few property owners might soon find themselves in another state.

Kelly, who teaches a class on U.S. borders, said the joint boundary commission began its work after Duke Energy approached the two states to sell them land that straddled the state line — and neither North Carolina nor South Carolina was sure of the exact location.

“That is what brought home to both states that, ‘You know what, we don’t exactly know where the boundary is — not just here out West, but the entire 334-mile boundary between the two states is equally fuzzy,’” he said.

Julia Jarema, spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Public Safety, said that in most segments of the boundary, the changes had little impact.

“It may be that the state border was on the right side of the tree, and (the property owner) thought it was on the left side of the tree,” she said. “It doesn’t really make any difference.”

But the reestablishment of the state line does have consequences for a few affected residents and business owners — one doctor with an N.C. medical license has discovered that most of his house, where he sometimes practices, is now in South Carolina, Kelly said.

The joint commission sent letters to 173 landowners who they felt might be impacted by the shift in the boundary.

Kelly said the commission is currently working on creating a package of bills that aim to mediate the effects of the change with regards to issues like taxes, voting and education. One potential bill would allow students to continue attending their current school, even if the boundary places them in another district.

Gary W. Thompson, chief of the North Carolina Geodetic Survey, said his office worked with its South Carolina counterpart and private surveyors to redefine the state line and reported their progress to the joint boundary commission for approval.

He said his office used old colonial documents, maps and land grants, combined with modern surveying technology and satellite images to assess the location of the original boundary.

“It was a total team effort from the very beginning,” he said.

By overlaying old colonial maps with modern satellite images, Kelly said, surveyors were able to use the shapes of certain plots of land to reestablish the state line.

“Basically, it was a combination of old fashioned detective work and historical research,” he said.

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