GC7F4YJ: Which State?

[+pseudoprime]

On a trip to Tennessee last weekend, I logged GC7F4YJ in the Tennessee welcome center. My Geocaching Profile shows it as my first cache in Sullivan County, Tennessee. Project-GC, on the other hand, lists it as my second cache in Washington County, Virginia. When I was closing in on the cache, it looked like I was only a few feet away from the border. So which state is it really in? The Project-GC documentation seems to say that they are more likely correct than whatever the cache hider listed, but in any case they aren't changing regions manually. I would think that since it's in the Tennessee welcome center, it's in Tennessee, but maybe it's one of these unknowable things?

(I care because I keep a list of counties cached in, and I'm not going back to Tennessee any time soon.) (But I don't care *a lot*.)

[+Harry Dolphin]

All my maps show it being in Virginia.  

[+hzoi]

The official geocaching map, as shown on the inset map on the cache page, puts this in Tennessee.

Other maps confuse the issue; see below for the results for, in order, OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, and Bing Maps.

I think there are arguments either way.  If this is for a challenge cache, I'd just make sure the challenge cache owner is aware of the issue.  If it's just for you, then, well, it's up to you how much you let it affect you.

I saw a similar issue with project-gc over another cache right in that area; GCRAYG should be just inside the Bristol City, VA, limit, but project-gc says I don't have a find there, because it draws the lines differently.

[+Harry Dolphin]

From what I can see from benchmarking. the latitude of the state line is N36 35.693, which would place the cache about  147' into Virginia.

[+hzoi]

1 hour ago, Harry Dolphin said:

From what I can see from benchmarking. the latitude of the state line is N36 35.693, which would place the cache about  147' into Virginia.

Which benchmark did you use?  I didn't find one on the line that was close by on the NGS site.

(The Virginia-Tennessee line, for the record, was supposed to follow 36° 30' but turned out to be not so straight.  Part of it is set by compact to run down the middle of State Street.)

[+pseudoprime]

I think I will follow Project-GC, just because it is my favorite stats site, and I don't want to keep track of an exception.

I would also though be curious about calculating from benchmarks to find the "right" answer. I would be surprised if it were as much as 147', though, as that would put much more of the welcome center in Virginia.

[+pseudoprime]

Update: On a cross-country drive a couple weeks ago, I found the virtual at Bristol Motor Speedway, which gave me the Sullivan County, Tennessee on my list of counties. (Would have been County 63 if GC7F4YJ counted, County 124 since it didn't.)

 

I saw today that Project-GC is updating their maps. I'll be interested to see if GC7F4YJ moves back to Tennessee.

Edited May 19, 2021 by pseudoprime

[+pseudoprime]

I got the update; it's back in Tennessee. (Project-GC lists me with 2 caches in Sullivan County.) I don't think I'm going to renumber my list, though.