Allexey Von Schmidt set this cast iron obelisk as one of only four such monuments during his 1872-73 survey of the California-Nevada boundary, intended to mark a point on the 120th meridian north of Lake Tahoe. In addition to these four monuments, he placed stone-mounded mileposts along the entire 612-mile boundary from Oregon to the Colorado River. The boundary had been disputed since 1850, and in 1863 the argument led to bloodshed in the Roop County War. A partial survey conducted in 1863 was later proved erroneous, and in 1872 the U.S. General Land Office commissioned Von Schmidt to correct the line and settle the dispute. The boundary remained contested until 1980, when the United States Supreme Court accepted Von Schmidt's survey from Lake Tahoe north to Oregon but rejected his line from Lake Tahoe south to the Colorado River in favor of a later survey by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.