Washington, DC Highpoint Dedication

Elevation highpoints captivate me from from time-to-time. I’ve visited a couple of state highpoints before (Mount Washington in New Hampshire and Timms Hill in Wisconsin). I also wrote about my triumphant climb to the summits of both the smallest self-governing county and the smallest independent city in the United States on the same day. It wasn’t a particularly remarkable or difficult feat as some of you may recall.


A Definitive Highpoint

So it was with great surprise and delight that I stumbled across an article in the Washington Post yesterday evening: “D.C’s Puny Peak Enough to Pump Up ‘Highpointers’.” Go ahead, take a look and come back. I’ll wait.

Washington, DC elevation highpoint. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Washington, DC Highpoint Marker

The DC highpoint now measures 409.02 feet above sea level. It’s exact location is 38° 57′ 06.67097″ N, 77° 04′ 33.99550 W, as provided by Highpointers.org, the group primarily responsible for making this recognition happen.


Surprises

Two things surprise me about this newly-recognized highpoint.

  • First, the Federal government created the District of Columbia in 1791. So it took more than two centuries to determine its elevation highpoint?
  • Second, the spot people generally considered the highpoint was wrong. The government built a reservoir atop the hill to gravity-feed water throughout the city. However, its construction apparently created an artificial highpoint so it doesn’t “count.”

So think of all the highpointers who will now have to return to the District to record the new spot.

The article also said it took the Washington, DC bureaucracy five years to recognize the change. Yes, now that I can believe. Oh, and by the way, if territory retroceded by the District of Columbia to Virginia in 1847 (Arlington County and part of the City of Alexandria) was still part of the District, then Arlington’s Minor’s Hill would be its highpoint.

The dedication is this morning (April 19, 2008) at 11:00.

[UPDATE: I visited the newly-recognized DC highpoint in June 2009]

Comments

One response to “Washington, DC Highpoint Dedication”

  1. Steve_CTMQ Avatar

    Eh, don’t feel too slighted. If my memory serves correctly, Michigan’s highpoint was re-determined sometime in the last 30 years or so.

    And my home state, CT, has a bit of a dodgy past with its highpoint as well. There’s a huge stone monument atop Bear Mountain with all sorts of highpoint platitudes but years later, it was determined the highest point in CT was about 8 miles NW on the side of Mt. Frissell which summits in MA.

    Did they move the giant stone monument? No, they put a tiny metal stake in the ground and called it a day.

    The funny thing is, the hike out to the true highpoint is one of the best in the state – AND Twelve MIle Circle fans – there is a handsome state tri-point obelisk (MA-CT-NY) a quarter mile down the very same trail.

    Now Bear Mountain is said to be the “highest peak” in CT, which is true.

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