Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America
By Edwin Danson
John Wiley & Sons, 2000

This is the first factual and definitive story of the making of the Mason-Dixon Line. Surely the most famous surveyors’ line ever drawn, it also was one of the greatest and most difficult scientific achievements of its time. Initially drawn in the years preceding the American Revolution to pacify an 80-year-old boundary feud between two great and powerful families (the Baltimores and the Penns), the line establishing the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania would come to mark the boundary between free and slave states, leading to a far more deadly feud. In Drawing the Line, readers journey with Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon through the fields and forests of 17^th century America. Not only do they see first hand what life was like in the backwoods and experience the hardships and dangers of frontier surveying, but they also learn many of the secrets of surveying from these two young and exuberant Englishmen. The exploits of Mason and Dixon are followed from their first mission to South Africa, through the American campaign and on to their final days working in Ireland and Norway.

Ed Danson is a skilled geodetic surveyor with some 35 years experience. He has used all his scientific skills and his deep interest in the history of his profession to research this book over a period of some ten years. Within the profession he is a respected and authoritative figure who has written extensively on his subject.

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