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| Vanity Shot at Delaware's Highpoint Sign |
The highest point in Delaware? It almost sounds like a joke. After all, Delaware is known for being both a very small state and a very flat state. There are no mountains there! What could possibly even count for a highpoint in Delaware? The answer, as one might imagine, is less than glamorous: a hilltop alongside a road. Yes, the highpoint is not even on a stand-alone hill. Worse, it is not even clear where the highpoint really is.
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| Sign for Delaware's Highpoint |
So let me go through this.
There is a very prominent sign along the Ebright Road (at it’s azimuth)
that declares the highpoint of Delaware with the name “Ebright Azimuth”. The sign says that the elevation is 447.85
feet high, making it the second lowest highpoint in the United States, falling
in just after Florida. The sign also
says that the highpoint is not at the location of the sign, rather it is “in
the vicinity”. This is where it gets
confusing. A stone’s throw away from the
sign there is a geodetic marker on the ground, also along the road. One can easily take this marker as being the
true highpoint. However, it is not
unique. If you follow the direction of
the arrow on the marker, it points to another geodetic marker several hundred
yards away across the road that leads into a trailer park. A quick trip over, one can find the second
geodetic marker housed prominently in a concrete cylinder just across from a
historic house. Certainly between these
two markers and the sign, one should have a true highpoint among the three,
right? Well, not so much. Apparently there is yet a THIRD marker also in
the “vicinity”. Its location is
uncertain, even among people who really worry about such things. Supposedly it lies on private property and
may very well have been built upon in the intervening years. Wow, what a mess! Suffice it to say, the true highpoint is not
particularly obvious, but it most certainly lies somewhere on the plane above
this hilltop. For the purposes of
highpointing, the sign together with the two markers are more than sufficient
to claim a successful ascent.
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| First Geodetic Marker near Sign |
Now, I would never have known so much about this confused
history of where the true highpoint lies just by coming across that sign. I actually had the very good fortune on my
visit to have my very own tour guide. It
all happened by accident. I was just
looking for a place to park, so I pulled into the subdivision beside the
highpoint sign. I parked in front of a
house, and I started to get my camera, phone, etc. The lady who lives at the house soon approached
me. I assumed she was just going to tell
me to leave, or something to that effect.
In fact, she asked if I was a “highpointer”. I answered, embarrassingly, that I was. She introduced herself as Doreen, and soon told
my girlfriend and me all about the Ebright Azimuth including the spiel about
where the true highpoint actually is. She
graciously walked us over to the sign and the first marker, and she even gave
me a lot of literature to read on the highpointer’s association. Who knew?
Uncommonly friendly and helpful, she really made this molehill as
interesting as any mountain. That was a
real treat!
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| Second Geodetic Marker |
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| Detail of Second Geodetic Marker |
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| Historic House Across from Second Geodetic Marker |
References:
Doreen provided me with a lot of reading material. Some of it is directly available on the web,
and part of it was from a book available from Amazon. Here is what I have:
Interesting article about someone doing 50 peaks in 50 days:
Another article about an ultra-athlete who has done all 50
peaks:
The official organization:
An out-of-print book that serves as a guidebook to each of
the state highpoints:
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