Brief Form Post 51: Summiting Evitts Mountain and Reaching the Mason-Dixon Line
I am pleased to add the 51st of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I get wordy with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will publish these brief Posts regularly.
On July 29, 2025, grandson Jack and I hiked the six-mile Evitts Mountain Homesite Trail in western Maryland’s Rocky Gap State Park. See my related photo essay on natural features we explored in our trek from base to summit (https://stevejonesgbh.com/2025/10/08/hiking-the-homesite-trail-at-rocky-gap-state-park/). I focus this Brief-Form Post on the summit, the view, the Mason-Dixon line, and the survey benchmark at the summit boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania.
A high school senior, Jack is a history enthusiast. He understood the significance of standing at the survey monument 259 years after Charles Mason, a mathematician and astronomer, and Jeremiah Dixon, a surveyor, hacked and traipsed their meticulous progress across the frontier wilderness. Both men were members of the Royal Society, a British learned society formed to promote excellence in science. The survey set out to resolve the long-standing (since 1681) disputed boundaries of the overlapping land grants of the Penns, proprietors of Pennsylvania, and the Calverts proprietors of Maryland.
A string of power transmission towers parallels the line just to the north of the monument. Utility maintenance crews control ROW vegetation, opening a vist to the east (left) and west (right). Note on the westerly view that the power line extends across the ridges and beyond. The survey party powered (man and horse power) through raw untrammeled forest
In pre-Civil War days, the line separated slave states to the south and free-soil states to the north.
Here is my 60-second video atop Evitts Mountain
Evitt’s summit stands at ~2,200 feet, just 200 feet shy of Alabama’s highest point, Mount Cheaha. This ridge and valley landscape is my birth home terrain. I explored the Nature of this region from my earliest memories…hiking, camping, hunting, picnicing, and fishing. I hope that Jack feels some of the magic.
I know he appreciated our venture. I asked him to record and narrate a brief summit video.
Jack is the young one to the left!
I recorded a 39-second video of the survey monument.
Having grown up in Cumberland, Maryland, just 5-7 miles from the Pennsylvania line, I rekindled a strong homing emotion at the monument. Memories flooded back to hikes and outings with Dad. I hope that Jack stores, within reach, recollections of his Mason-Dixon venture with Pap.
As a hopeless, lifetime Nature enthusiast, I must end this essay with two Nature observations. Great mullein stood in full flower and velvet-leafed splendor at the power line.
A pair of two-striped grasshoppers found reason to celebrate the midday glory atop Evitts Mountain, atop a great mullein leaf, and just plain atop!
Closing
I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements.
Granted, the Central Appalachians pale in comparison to even the Great Smokies or New Hampshire’s Presidential Range. Yet to a 74-year-old Nature enthusiast who in the 26 months preceding our hike, endured triple bypass surgery, two total knee replacements, bilateral inguinal hernia repair, and kidney stone blasting, I cherished trekking 1,100 feet to Evitts’ summit and relished our rest at he Mason-Dixon monument, serving as a healing and recovery benchmark.
We paused at the monument. I heard (not literally) the echoes of Mason and Dixon as they memorialized yet another ridgetop survey monument. I realized and included in Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits this simple reflection:
We do not stand apart from Nature, but are one with it!
Nature’s special treats await our discovery, our understanding, and our interpretation!
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