Before you start getting all medieval on me, yes, I know the park is technically in California, but because it represents the border between California and Nevada, I'm placing the site in Nevada. If this upsets you, have your attorneys contact me and we'll arrange a settlement. The number is 1-800-438-5678.
First. Mr. Von Schmidt. Alexey W. Von Schmidt (1821–1906) was a civil engineer and surveyor who became a major figure in the history of the California–Nevada boundary. In 1865 he incurred the wrath of Nevada by organizing the organized the Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Water Works Company and scheming to build a dam at Lake Tahoe and divert water to San Francisco via a tunnel.
TAHOE GOING THE OTHER WAY.
Von Schmidt, the irrepressible engineer who constructed the Spring Valley Water Works of this city, is in town for a day or two, having just returned from his preliminary survey of the proposed canal and tunnel for running off a portion of the waters of Lake Tahoe. He declares that he has got a dead thing this time, sure, having found a point at which he can tap the lake by a tunnel of only eleven thousand feet through solid granite rock. He says the work can be accomplished in four years at a cost of only a few hundred millions, more or less, and is bound to be put through. So prepare to lose the cream of your beautiful mountain lake, for even one foot drawn off the surface will leave wide marshes and shallows all around the shores of that glorious gem of the Sierras. There is one consolation for you, however: he says that he can take the Pacific Railroad through this tunnel also and thereby greatly reduce the cost and time of building that great work, and avoiding the snows of the summit, which at present bid fair to prove a perpetual barrier to the progress of the road, or to the running of it, provided it is built. So prepare to see the water leave and the railroad come. Both events will occur at once.
-Gold Hill Daily News, August 19, 1865
Opposition steadily grew to his proposal, however.
Facing off against Von Schmidt’s Big Bore were California’s Big Four, including Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and the other powerful owners of the Union Pacific Railroad. Granted vast private timber rights by the federal government, they now needed Tahoe’s surplus water to flush or float millions of feet of virgin Tahoe timber directly into their Nevada sawmills. After forming the Donner Lumber and Boom Company, headed by Mark Hopkins and Leland Stanford, they were granted authority by the California Legislature on April 4, 1870 to construct a dam at the exact same location as Von Schmidt’s. One lake; one river: two dams? The Bore War had begun. Meanwhile, Nevada’s newspapers attacked Von Schmidt’s proposal as Tahoe’s Tunnel of Doom. Soon, all of Nevada joined in the fray, vowing that “Von Schmidt should most certainly be the one damned instead of damming the Truckee.” As the Virginia City Daily Territorial Enterprise thundered on March 2, 1870, “They may take the gold and silver from our hills, and bind us in vassalage to the caprices of their stock boards, but the pure water that comes to us from Lake Tahoe, that drives our mills and makes glad our waste places, is God’s exhaustless gift, and the hand of man cannot deprive us of it.”
-Tahoe Quarterly
Meanwhile, in 1872–73, under contract with the U.S. General Land Office, he surveyed and marked the boundary from the Oregon line to the Colorado River. His work was controversial from the beginning, particularly because he established his own location for the 120th meridian rather than using the point established by an earlier survey. The north-south portion of his line, from Oregon to Lake Tahoe, was ultimately recognized as the legal boundary, but his survey from Lake Tahoe southward toward the Las Vegas area was found to be inaccurate. His oblique line was neither straight nor accurate, partly because the Colorado River had shifted from the position used as his intended endpoint. A new U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey was therefore conducted between 1893 and 1899, producing the boundary line that California and Nevada subsequently adopted for the southern portion.
Second, the survey. By the early 1860s, the boundary was a serious jurisdictional problem in the Esmeralda mining district, particularly at Aurora. The town was claimed by both California and Nevada. It was even functioning as the county seat of both Mono County, California, and Esmeralda County, Nevada, and in 1862 Aurora residents elected representatives to both state legislatures. The confusion was significant enough that an 1863 report specifically discussed the need to determine the boundary in the Aurora area. The first major attempt to settle the matter was the 1863 Houghton–Ives survey, but it was incomplete. Then Daniel G. Major's 1867–68 survey of the Oregon boundary placed the intersection with the supposed 120th meridian more than two miles west of the Houghton–Ives location. That discrepancy prompted the Commissioner of the General Land Office to recommend that Congress fund a complete survey of California's eastern boundary, which Congress authorized in 1872. That is what brought Von Schmidt into the picture.
Acting Governor Orion Clemens and Governor Leland Stanford of California appointed the surveying team of John F. Kidder and Butler Ives in May of 1863 to factually, and finally, determine the actual boundary line between the two states, pending the approval of their respective legislatures. This in turn led directly into the dispute over the town of Aurora, the citizens of which had recently held their celebrated election and sent representatives to both state legislatures, since they, too, were not certain of their state residency. The outcome of the Kidder-Ives Survey, of course, found the Honey Lake area to lie within California and Aurora barely within the confines of Nevada-a land swap that was to prove most beneficial to Nevada because of the rich mines in the Esmeralda District.
-Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Summer 1973
But there were still problems. In 1867–68, Daniel G. Major surveyed the Oregon–California boundary for the General Land Office. As part of that work, he determined where the 120th meridian intersected the 42nd parallel (the Oregon–California boundary). His location was more than two miles west of the 120th-meridian position established by the Houghton–Ives survey. And then, interestingly, another survey near the Oregon border in the summer of 1872, which placed the meridian east of both Major and Houghton–Ives.The Supreme Court explicitly identifies this discrepancy as the event that eventually led the Commissioner of the General Land Office to recommend a new survey of California's eastern boundary.
Colonel A. W. Von Schmidt left Truckee yesterday with a corps of surveyors for Hot Springs, from which point he will continue the boundary survey between Nevada and California. The survey will be made to the southward from Hot Springs to the Carson Valley, and from thence to the Colorado river. We suggested to Von Schmidt the propriety of getting all of Lake Tahoe within the State of California, if it is possible. We privately informed him that a man who could blow up Blossom Rock so easily ought to be able to crowd the little bit of water left of Lake Tahoe, in the State of Nevada, over into this State. The Colonel admitted the force of the reasoning, but asserted that there were engineering difficulties in the way over which he had no control, which would prevent the consummation of such a desirable event. However, he said it was impossible to tell what another and a more accurate survey might accomplish.—Truckee Republican.
-Eureka Daily Sentinel, April 18, 1873
Von Schmidt's survey and water grab wasn't winning him any fans.
People wishing to visit this fine lake should do so soon, as the timber is being cut off so rapidly that before many years roll round, what are now picturesque forests will be changed to bleak, desolate and unsightly mountains. This [Hot Springs Station] station was formerly in Douglas county, Nevada, but by Von Schmidt's new boundary survey it is now in Placer county, California. As to Von Schmidt's project, the people on the lake take but little interest in it one way or the other; they swear he shan't drain it, but as his plan of procedure will only make more of the lake, they don't care. So says Mr. Ricker; and while in conversation with the reverend gentleman yesterday, he informed me that, so far as he was personally concerned, if they didn't interfere with the lake, the Truckee could go into the hands of Von Schmidt and be d—d, and the water all turned out of it, if the ranchers along the Truckee valley were so blind to their own interests as to allow their rights to be gobbled up in that manner.
-Gold Hill Daily News, August 13, 1873
Not everyone was happy with the survey outcome.
ACCEPTED —We just learned to-day that the so-called Von Schmidt survey, establishing the boundary line between this State and California had been accepted two months ago by the Commissioner of the General Land Office. This settles then the question then for the time being. We must acquiesce in the decision, and stand loss of over $1,000,000 worth of property.
-Nevada State Journal, April 12, 1874
Orders were issued to respect the survey.
THE STATE BOUNDARY.—The following circular has been addressed by the Controller to the Assessors of Washoe, Ormsby, Douglas and Esmeralda counties: "This office, having received official notification of the confirmation by the Federal authorities of what is known as the "Von Schmidt" survey of the eastern boundary of the State of California, you will please take notice of, and respect said survey in making the assessment of property in your county."—[Carson Appeal, 15th.]
-The Pioche Record, May 21, 1874
Third, the error. South of Lake Tahoe, Von Schmidt’s error arose when he tried to reproduce the oblique boundary established from the 39th parallel at Lake Tahoe toward the 35th parallel on the Colorado River. The Colorado River had shifted from the location identified by the earlier Ives survey, so when Von Schmidt reached the river in 1873 he moved his endpoint to the river’s then-current channel and discovered that his straight line no longer connected correctly. He attempted to correct the line by retracing part of it northward, but ran out of funding before completing the correction, leaving a kink and an inaccurate alignment in the boundary.
Finally, the fix. Property owners and county governments were constantly in conflict over tax collection, clouded property titles, legal and law enforcement jurisdiction, and the fact that Von Schmidt’s 1872–1873 survey was known to be incomplete—specifically his abandoned "kink" on the oblique line where he ran out of funding—doubts persisted in Washington, D.C., about its legal validity. Because the federal government now possessed the technological capability to lay down an indisputable, mathematically sound line, and because local land confusion was worsening, Congress funded the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (under survey leaders C.H. Sinclair and O.B. French) to resurvey and permanently monument the oblique boundary once and for all. The correction was made in a new survey conducted from 1893 to 1899. The USC&GS found that Von Schmidt’s line was neither straight nor accurate and established a new line. California formally adopted it in 1901, and Nevada in 1903.
USGS maps still show the "Von Schmidt Line" and, in at least one place, the locations of the iron markers he left behind. Von Schmidt was tasked with leaving markers every miles, but most of those were simply piles of stones or simple wooden markers. Only four iron markers are known to have been used.