Monument
The monument where "visitors can simultaneously straddle the territory of four states" is maintained as a tourist attraction by the Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation Department. Unlike many other attractions based on political boundaries, such as the Berlin Wall, it is an example of a political boundary as a tourist destination for the sake of itself. The monument consists of a granite disk embedded with a smaller bronze disk around the point, surrounded by smaller, appropriately located state seals and flags representing both the states and tribal nations of the area. Circling the point, with two words in each state, the disk reads, "Four states here meet in freedom under God." Around the monument, local Navajo and Ute artisans sell souvenirs and food. An admission fee is required to view and photograph the monument. The monument is a popular tourist attraction despite its remote and isolated location. It has become something of a phenomenon for people to travel long distances to take pictures of family and friends at the monument in Twister-like poses, sitting on the disk, in a circle of friends or family around the disk, or for couples to kiss directly over the disk.
Read more about this topic: Four Corners Monument
Famous quotes containing the word monument:
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city’s throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The Pyramids do not tell the tale which was confided to them; the living fact commemorates itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)