Stand on Three States: Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma

Quapaw, Oklahoma

If you can't make it to Four Corners (the only place where four states meet), this is nearly as good, and it's free, and it's open 24/7.

According to a plaque at the three-state spot, it took an 800-member expedition to map it. They spent nearly six months in 1857 walking only 40 miles from the southwest Missouri border, "hampered by rough terrain, heavy timber, and high water." And we enjoy the benefits of their labor; thank you, hardy pioneers!

A massive stone cairn was built at the spot in 1938 by the National Youth Administration, but a weathered plaque on the cairn notes that it doesn't mark the actual spot, which is 50 feet east. This was rectified in Oct. 2004, when the Missouri Association of County Surveyors embedded a stand-here plaque in the ground on the actual three-state spot, which, conveniently, is at the end of a dead-end road. Stand on three states, with easy parking, too.