Novi Baseline Obelisk

Surveyors measuring Michigan from 1815 to 1853 showed courage, determination, integrity, and ingenuity in work that led to globally adopted innovations in land measurement and ownership. The surveying of the base line reflected a collision among four contrasting concepts of property—Native American, European Aristocratic, Colonial American, and Jeffersonian—from which emerged a new, uniquely American set of principles that profoundly shaped the landscape, laws, and way of life. A Native American proverb declares, “Treat the earth well: We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” The Novi Baseline Obelisk is the third in a series aligned near Michigan’s Base Line. Its panels connect local history to those larger ideas through references to European Aristocratic metes and bounds and ownership by heads of state under King George III in 1763; Colonial American metes and bounds and ownership by imperial decree; Grand River and the railroad linking Novi with the nation; agriculture as the original foundation of the Novi community; Erastus Ingersoll as the first Novi settler in 1825; the first Novi Town Hall in 1876; the Village of Novi in 1958; the City of Novi in 1969; the Fuerst Barn; and Jeffersonian ideas of an immaculate grid and widespread small landownership, alongside the observation that surveyors create boundaries while people create community.

Novi, Michigan · United States