The Von Schmidt State Boundary Monument was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.

[4] Von Schmidt applied for and was granted the contract to survey the state's frontier border east of the Sierra Nevada.

In 1872 Von Schmidt using only a compass, a sextant and dead reckoning process set out with his crew to define the boundary.

[4] The exact location of the north-south California-Nevada border, between Lake Tahoe and the intersection of the southern boundary of Oregon at the 42nd parallel, was contentious and was surveyed and re-surveyed many time.

Von Schmidt heard about the gold at Sutter's Fort area of the Central Valley and came looking.

Trained as a civil engineer and surveyor, he departed the gold prospecting camps, to return to surveying.

One of the large projects was to help build San Francisco's first dam and drinking water aqueduct system.

[9][10] In July 1976 surveyor Bud Uzes retraced Von Schmidt's 1872–1873 trip along California's border at North Tahoe.