| of 1877. Accordingly, the boundary line between West Virginia and Maryland remained
uncertain, not only as to the boundary along the Potomac River, but as to Maryland's western
boundary running north from the first fountain of the Potomac River.
In 1891, Maryland filed suit in the Supreme Court to settle the controversy. Maryland v.
West Virginia, 217 U.S. 1, 22 (1910). The principal matter in dispute related to the location of
Maryland's western boundary line running north from the "first fountain" on the North Branch of
the Potomac River to the Pennsylvania line, a dispute that involved overlapping territory in
Preston County, West Virginia, and Garrett County, Maryland. Id. at 23. West Virginia argued
for the long established "Deakins Line," surveyed in 1788, which was not a true meridian but,
owing to the surveyor's compass, ran slightly to the northeast. Id. at 24, 34, 38-39. Maryland
argued in favor of a true meridian, running due north, along the line surveyed by Lieutenant
Michler in 1859. Id. at 32, 37.'4' The Court resolved this dispute in favor of West Virginia and
the Deakins Line. Id. at 41-45.
West Virginia filed a cross-bill against Maryland in which it urged that Maryland's
southwestern boundary with West Virginia be established along the Maryland shore of the
Potomac River. Id. at 24. The Court rejected that argument based on its earlier decision in
Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196 (1899). In Morris, the Court held that the heirs of James
Marshall and Chief Justice John Marshall did not own title to property in the riverbed of the
Potomac River adjacent to the District of Columbia. The Court ruled that those claims, deriving
from the 1688 grant of the Northern Neck by James II to Lord Culpeper, were inferior to the
'.a The difference created an inverted triangle or wedge of disputed territory, the base of
which was three-quarters of a mile in length along the Pennsylvania-Maryland line. 217 U.S. at
37.
37
|
