In 1816 the boundary was "adjusted" west to the mouth of the Kansas River on the Missouri River which was a more significant geographic boundary than Fire Prairie Creek. Although no treaties were in place acknowledging the new line, the United States began to survey the new boundary line to which all were to be removed. Sullivan was instructed to run by his boss William Rector, head of the survey agency for Missouri and Illinois territories to draw a line north from the mouth of the Kansas River and thence east and 40 chains to the Des Moines River. Sullivan was to be criticized later for not extending the line all the way to the similarly named Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi River at about the latitude of Fort Madison, Iowa. Sullivan was to begin his survey on the "far bank" of the confluence on the Left Bank of the Missouri at what is now the Clay County, Missouri and Platte County, Missouri line at what is now property owned by Kansas City Downtown Airport. The mark that now forms the Iowa-Missouri border was placed just north of Sheridan, Missouri. Joseph C. Brown in 1823 survey the boundary south to the Arkansas boundary. From Arkansas it has a small eastward angle to the Arkansas River at Fort Smith, Arkansas where it then heads due south before briefly following the Red River of the South to the Texas border. The line now forms the border between Missouri and Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, and Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Sullivan Line
Sullivan drifted northward by 2 degrees as he headed east to the Des Moines which he described as shallow and calm when he crossed it at just south of Farmington, Iowa. Sullivan was a delegate to the Missouri Constitutional Convention that defined the state's borders. The initial proposal for the boundaries of Missouri were close to the boundaries of today and followed the original Osage territory. There was a debate about extending the northern border further north to the mouth of the Rock River at Rock Island, Illinois and the western boundary further west to the mouth of the Wolf River at White Cloud, Kansas. The additions would have made Missouri the largest state in the Union and under Congressional pressure it was dropped back to the current configuration since the lines were already marked (plus the addition of the Bootheel to accommodate the wishes of Mississippi River towns to stay with their Missouri compatriots. The state's official description was: The wording in the Constitution of "north along the said meridian line, to the intersection of the parallel of latitude which passes through the rapids of the River Des Moines, making said line correspond with the Indian boundary-line" was to stir problems later since Sullivan had not crossed any rapids while a set of rapids on the Mississippi River called the Des Moines Rapids defined the northern navigational end of the Mississippi which was deep in the rapids. In 1824, treaties for the Ioway, Sac and Fox ceding their land in Missouri implied that the Sullivan Line was Missouri's northern border all the way to the Mississippi. Missouri did not formally move to claim the land south of the Sullivan Line to the mouth of the Des Moines at Keokuk, Iowa became known as Half Breed Tract and was declared part of Iowa when it joined the Union in 1846. Since it is south of the Sullivan Line it is the southernmost point in Iowa.
Honey War
After Sullivan died in 1830, the Sullivan Line was extended in the west to the Missouri River in 1836 as the U.S. government in the Platte Purchase bought all the land west from the Indian Boundary Line and then permitted Missouri to annex the land. As part of the purchase, Missouri wanted the Sullivan Line resurveyed. Joseph C. Brown who was involved with establishing the Fifth Principal Meridian from which most of land in the Louisiana Territory was mapped was hired by Missouri to resurvey the land. Brown was to say that instead of using the mouth of the Kansas, the northern should have been determined by its relation to the mouth of Ohio River. Brown said the border should be north of the Sullivan Line at what is now Lacey-Keosauqua State Park in Keosauqua, Iowa. Brown's Line was not recognized by Iowa. Missouri sent Clark County, Missouri sheriff to collect taxes in the strip and was arrested. According to legend Missouri tax collectors cut down three trees that had honey bee hives to collect honey in lieu of taxes. State militias from both Missouri and Iowa were called out before the governors eventually agreed to let the Supreme Court decide the case which it did in State of Missouri v. State of Iowa, 48 U.S. 660, upholding the Sullivan Line noting that is how it was written in state's constitution. The line was resurveyed to correct various jogs as disputes were to continue over the line into the 20th century.
In addition to his surveys in Missouri, Sullivan also surveyed a strip of land on either side of the Chicago River extending from Lake Michigan to the Fox River. This was to ultimately clear the way for the Illinois and Michigan Canal and eventually the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal connecting Lake Michigan, Chicago, Illinois to the Illinois River and ultimately the Mississippi. The survey done in 1818-1819 on land ceded by the Sac and Fox in the Treaty of St. Louis. The survey resulted in several streets in Chicago having a diagonal that is at odds with the city's grid pattern.
