Setting out in 1763, the duo slogged westward at roughly two miles a day, performing astronomical calculations at night to mark a straight line through the wilderness.
While originally just a property line, it eventually became the symbolic boundary between free and slave states, and today remains a cultural marker between the American North and South. 2. Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon dixon mason
In the 1760s, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were hired to end a violent boundary dispute between the Penn family (Pennsylvania) and the Calvert family (Maryland). Setting out in 1763, the duo slogged westward