Posted on 11/30/2025 7:08:10 PM PST by Red Badger
A “state line” sign delineates the Michigan-Indiana border in Ray, an unincorporated community about 30 miles east of Sturgis split between the two states. (Bridge photo by Lauren Gibbons)
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* Michigan-Indiana border hasn’t been officially surveyed since the early 1800s, and most official markers have been lost to time
* A commission created to fix the issue has stalled amid difficulties finding surveyors to tackle the full 110-mile project
* State Sen. Jonathan Lindsey, R-Coldwater, hopes his Senate-passed bill will give commissioners the time and tools needed to finish the job
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Despite efforts in recent years to gain clarity, the roughly 110-mile state line between Michigan and Indiana remains blurry as ever.
The last official survey of the dividing line between Michiganders and Hoosiers was conducted in 1827, and wooden markers placed by federal surveyors at that time have largely rotted into the pastoral landscape.
Some surveyors have estimated that the state line generally accepted by locals could be off by a few feet in some areas, creating potential areas of conflict.
Unlike Michigan’s border with Ohio — famously decided by the Toledo War — and the border dispute with Wisconsin that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, no one has ever bothered to contest the dividing line between Michigan and Indiana.
But especially for residents living on or near the border, an official state line would provide needed clarity in the event a dispute ever did come up, said state Sen. Jonathan Lindsey, a Coldwater Republican whose district encompasses the entire Michigan-Indiana border.
“I think this is the type of issue that isn’t a problem until it is,” Lindsey told Bridge Michigan. “And if it becomes a problem, it would be a very big problem.”
In 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed bipartisan legislation authorizing a state commission for resurveying the border, along with an initial $500,000 appropriation to start the job. Indiana officials have similarly been open to a resurvey, and more recently opened the possibility of reviewing its borders with Illinois as well.
Prior to the law’s passage, advocates had been working for decades to get both states interested in the project.
Jack Owens, a longtime land surveyor based in Roscommon, began researching the subject in the early 2000s and eventually assembled a group of volunteer surveyors who met periodically to search for any traces of the old mile markers. Owens died in December 2023.
A marker delineating the Michigan-Indiana border in Ray, an unincorporated community split between the two states (Bridge photo by Lauren Gibbons)
Though his and others’ efforts ultimately resulted in the border commission’s creation, the work has hit a snag. Despite putting out two requests for proposals, the state didn’t get any bites from private surveying companies willing and able to take on the large project.
“We didn’t receive any qualifying bids,” Andrew Brisbo, director of Bureau of Construction Codes for Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, told lawmakers during an October Senate committee hearing.
“We went back and discussed with the commission whether it might be a better approach to provide the funding to the county surveying programs on the border,” he continued. “They have the capacity to do the work, and they can just build it into those programs in order to get the work done.”
In 2024, a survey conducted by DLZ and presented to the commission determined at least 100 mile posts along the border need to be re-established. The firm identified 10 potential areas of conflict that would need to be cleared up between the two states.
Lindsey, the state senator, this year introduced legislation that would allow local surveyors in each of the five Michigan counties bordering Indiana to take on a section of the state line and split up the project into more manageable chunks.
His bill, which unanimously passed the state Senate last month and is currently pending in the House, would give the commission another four years to complete the project, extending the project’s timeline from Jan. 1, 2026 to Jan. 1, 2030.
Brisbo estimated the surveying work could be completed by county surveyors within a couple of years, leaving time to allow officials in both states to reconcile any discrepancies before the proposed 2030 deadline.
Though most of the border is covered by rural farmland, a handful of communities directly straddle state lines — including the unincorporated community of Ray, where residents live in either Michigan or Indiana depending on what side of the main street they’re on.
Proponents of the decades-long effort view an updated border survey as a preventive measure that would deter confusion or legal disputes in areas that don’t clearly fall in one state or the other.
Once finished, the location of the border line would be known down to the nearest couple of centimeters, and new markers would be installed to keep the state line from getting lost to time again.
“We have a positive goodwill and desire on both sides of the border to just formalize this and get it done,” Lindsey said.
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When they re-marked the section corners across my county, I got to ride along with the surveyors. In the back of the van, they had a bunch of old books and maps. I saw for myself the description of the location of one of the corner coins.
“approximately 4 ft ENE of a 24 inch pine with an 8 inch oak nearby.”
I’ll be danged if they didn’t find a big old pine stump next to a 30 inch live oak tree with a bronze disc on a steel spike buried about 6 inches under the surface in the middle of a forest.
Sure they used GPS and a metal detector, but they started looking about 6 ft from the spot without turning on the GPS locator.
Incredible.
I worked three summers for the Oklahoma Highway Department surveying Interstate 35 near Ardmore. We were renewing the preliminary survey from several years before.
We were looking for a marker when a county survey team stopped to see what we were doing. They offered to have one of their team members ‘witch’ for the marker, just like witching for water but with metal rods. We were skeptical but we weren’t having any luck finding the marker.
Their team member used his rods and the first two ‘hits’ were a bottle cap and an old nail. The third hit was our old marker. We were impressed. The marker was six inches below ground level.
It was discussing the border between Indiana and Michigan.
You’re doing borders today.
Borders, Language, Culture...............Dr. Michael Savage........
I’m sure I’m missing something.
Is there some question about the exact location of the border between the states?
Is there some question about which state the houses along that street are located in?
Have the people who live there been voting , paying taxes, have drivers’ licenses, etc. from one of the states without anyone questioning, which state they live in up until now?
Are some properties going to legally now be moved from one state to the other?
A friend who spent some time in the field in Pakistan tells me that he saw Paki military out witching for landmines. They seemed to have confidence in the method. I wouldn’t want to go along for the demonstration, but it’s something to think about.
No real estate problems, just bureaucratic nonsense.
We have a beach bar on the Florida-Alabama state line called the Florabama Lounge.
They don’t have a problem.
I hear there is a similar bar up in the northeast on the Canadian-USA border that is split....................
We were impressed too by the witching for metal. Each time the metal rods crossed, we would take a plumb bob and lower it to the ground. Each time there was metal there.
They offered to teach us how to do the witching. One of our guys became really good at it. Others not so good.
It’s one thing to witch for metal and another thing entirely to witch for land mines.
I’ve also been with a private inholder on a major Civil War battlefield who demonstrated witching for graves. He has researched his property carefully and has good evidence from letters and regimental histories that there are/were graves in the vicinity of where he gets hits, but the site has never been dug and he doesn’t want it disturbed. Nor does he want the location disclosed because the relic hunters would swarm it the moment his head was turned.
The two of them literally went to war over it. Google “Toledo Strip War.”
Not specific enough
That’s one of the reasons Ohio and Michigan don’t get along.
I have my g grandfather’s bayonet from CW 1. My mom hid it in a pillowcase.
The only Indiana joke I know:
“Indiana is a really messed up State, you know.”
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“Well, the city of South Bend is in the north of the State; North Vernon is in the south; and French Lick isn’t at all what I thought it was going to be.”
How do we know the toothbrush was invented in Indiana?
Because if it had been invented anywhere else, it would be called a teethbrush...........
Notre Dame students always wanted to be in Michigan rather than indiana.
Well maybe Indiana can do what Michigan couldn’t, beat the Buckeyes.
I went to the Space and Air Museum in Indiana...
I paid $20 just to see an empty warehouse.
Maps are flat.
Da Erf is nearly a sphere.
Surveyors have long been in a difficult position to resolve the difference between the two.
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