COUNTY BOUNDARIES OF COLORADO 



207 



In 1879 the second state assembly gave to Saguache, already a much- 

 bounded county, a new line on its south, and at the same time a ground for 

 future litigation.^ To the adjoining county of Lake, between Snowy 



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Map IX. — 1879 — Second General Assembly. 



jeing overthrown and the point being placed twelve miles farther west by the district court of Grand upon 

 ippeal of Grand. The court of Appeals, in 1894, reversed the decision of the court below, and remanded the 

 ase (IV Colorado Court of Appeals, p. 306). Subsequently the county attorneys of Grand and Routt agreed 

 to run the line from the southwest comer of township No. i, range 82, west. 



' An adjudication of the common boundaries of Saguache, Hinsdale, and Rio Grande occurred after 

 the beginning of the mining boom at Creede and before the creation of Mineral county in 1893. In order 

 to determine the location of certain of the new camps, appeal was jointly made by the counties to the state 

 engineer, J. B. Maxwell, under the act of 1887. Maxwell sat at Creede in March, 1892, and handed down 

 a decision defining the southern boundary of Saguache as nmning from the intersection of the tenth correction 

 line north with the first guide meridian east of the New Mexico principal meridian, west to an intersection 

 with a line running northwesterly from Del Norte to Cochetopa Pass, and northwesterly to said pass; thence 

 southwesterly along the continental divide to the one hundred and seventh meridian. {Colorado State 

 Engineer, Sixth Biennial Report, pp. 42-50.) This decision of the state engineer was later contested by 

 Mineral county, and the district court of Chaffee reversed the decision on the ground that the procedure of the 

 state engineer was illegal, his duty being to survey a line, not merely to adjudicate it. The court also took 

 evidence and estabUshed the Rio Grande River, west of the New Mexico meridian, as the southern line of 

 Saguache, in place of the continental divide. Upon the appeal of Hinsdale, this decision was reversed by the 

 court of appeals at its April term, 1897 {Colorado Court of Appeals Reports, Vol. IX, p. 368). A year later, 

 the court of appeals was itself reversed by the supreme court, upon the appeal of Mineral (Colorado Supreme 

 Court Reports, Vol. XXV, p. 95). In the light of these decisions, the Saguache-Hinsdale line must be inter- 



