Michigan's 110-mile border with Indiana is fuzzy: It 'isn't a problem until it is'

FILE - This Aug., 2008 file photo shows people living on the north side of State Line Road in Berrien County's Niles Township, Mich. On the other side, pictured here, people live in the city of South Bend, Ind. (AP Photo/James Prichard, file)

By LAUREN GIBBONS/Bridge Michigan Bridge Michigan

Despite efforts in recent years to gain clarity, the roughly 110-mile state line between Michigan and Indiana remains blurry as ever.

The last official survey of the dividing line between Michiganders and Hoosiers was conducted in 1827, and wooden markers placed by federal surveyors at that time have largely rotted into the pastoral landscape.

Some surveyors have estimated that the state line generally accepted by locals could be off by a few feet in some areas, creating potential areas of conflict.

Unlike Michigan’s border with Ohio — famously decided by the Toledo War — and the border dispute with Wisconsin that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, no one has ever bothered to contest the dividing line between Michigan and Indiana.

But especially for residents living on or near the border, an official state line would provide needed clarity in the event a dispute ever did come up, said state Sen. Jonathan Lindsey, a Coldwater Republican whose district encompasses the entire Michigan-Indiana border.

“I think this is the type of issue that isn’t a problem until it is,” Lindsey told Bridge Michigan. “And if it becomes a problem, it would be a very big problem.”

In 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed bipartisan legislation authorizing a state commission for resurveying the border, along with an initial $500,000 appropriation to start the job. Indiana officials have similarly been open to a resurvey, and more recently opened the possibility of reviewing its borders with Illinois as well.

Prior to the law’s passage, advocates had been working for decades to get both states interested in the project.

Jack Owens, a longtime land surveyor based in Roscommon, began researching the subject in the early 2000s and eventually assembled a group of volunteer surveyors who met periodically to search for any traces of the old mile markers. Owens died in December 2023.

Though his and others’ efforts ultimately resulted in the border commission’s creation, the work has hit a snag. Despite putting out two requests for proposals, the state didn’t get any bites from private surveying companies willing and able to take on the large project.

“We didn’t receive any qualifying bids,” Andrew Brisbo, director of Bureau of Construction Codes for Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, told lawmakers during an October Senate committee hearing.

“We went back and discussed with the commission whether it might be a better approach to provide the funding to the county surveying programs on the border,” he continued. “They have the capacity to do the work, and they can just build it into those programs in order to get the work done.”

In 2024, a survey conducted by DLZ and presented to the commission determined at least 100 mile posts along the border need to be re-established. The firm identified 10 potential areas of conflict that would need to be cleared up between the two states.

Lindsey, the state senator, this year introduced legislation that would allow local surveyors in each of the five Michigan counties bordering Indiana to take on a section of the state line and split up the project into more manageable chunks.

His bill, which unanimously passed the state Senate last month and is currently pending in the House, would give the commission another four years to complete the project, extending the project’s timeline from Jan. 1, 2026 to Jan. 1, 2030.

Brisbo estimated the surveying work could be completed by county surveyors within a couple of years, leaving time to allow officials in both states to reconcile any discrepancies before the proposed 2030 deadline.

Though most of the border is covered by rural farmland, a handful of communities directly straddle state lines — including the unincorporated community of Ray, where residents live in either Michigan or Indiana depending on what side of the main street they’re on.

Proponents of the decades-long effort view an updated border survey as a preventive measure that would deter confusion or legal disputes in areas that don’t clearly fall in one state or the other.

Once finished, the location of the border line would be known down to the nearest couple of centimeters, and new markers would be installed to keep the state line from getting lost to time again.

“We have a positive goodwill and desire on both sides of the border to just formalize this and get it done,” Lindsey said.

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This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.