As part of the compromise of 1850 , California was speedily admitted to the Union . In doing so , congress approved the California Constitution which defined the state 's boundary in reference to geographical coordinates . This includes the section of the 120th meridian that is between the 42nd parallel at the Oregon border to the 39th parallel amid Lake Tahoe , and an oblique line continuing from that point southward to where the Colorado River crosses the 35th parallel . Fourteen years later , congress approved the Nevada Constitution when it was admitted as a state in 1864 , which defined its western border at the forty third degree of Longitude West from Washington D.C. and its southwestern border along the oblique section of the boundary line of California . While 43 degrees of longitude west from the Washington Meridian does not really coincide with the 120 degrees longitude west of Greenwich , the 1864 Congress was of the belief that the two lines were identical ; the former was abandoned nationally in 1884 . The centuries long dispute that erupted began with boundary discrepancies across many surveys within which were valuable mineral deposits ; Nevada also had a wish that California would assent to cede its land east of the pacific crest as had been preauthorized by congress in 1850 . The first consequential attempt to mark the California-Nevada boundary was the 1863 J.F. Houghton and Butler Ives line . An 1867-1868 survey of the California-Oregon border by Daniel G. Major for the General Land Office found the 120th meridian more than two miles west of the prior line , so it was followed by the 1872 survey by Allexey W. Von Schmidt . Against initial instructions , Von Schmidt began his survey with the 1872 California-Nevada State Boundary Marker which was six-tenths of a mile east of the Houghton-Ives line . When he discovered the Colorado River had shifted at the 35th parallel , he simply changed the endpoint resulting in a survey that was neither straight nor accurate . Substantial doubts lead congress in 1892 to fund the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey to remark the oblique line . This new survey found the Von Schmidt line to be 1,600 to 1,800 feet too far west , but both surveys were then used by both states . Unsurprisingly , the combination of the 1893 C.G.S. survey 's oblique line and Schmidt 's well marked north-south line do not intersect precisely at the 39th parallel as mandated by the California Constitution . Congress does not have the constitutional power to unilaterally move state boundaries
abandoned
International Meridian Conference
Lake Tahoe