Boundary stone hike – Lörrach, Inzlingen/Riehen # Stage 2

Setting boundary stones with the aim of sovereign functions began around the year 1300. Known as "cross stones", they initially served to demarcate the area around Basel where travelers and market visitors could count on the safe protection of the bishop. Conversely, they also marked the point up to which those banished from the city were allowed to approach this ban zone. Over the centuries, the sovereign determination increasingly became dominated by possession and tax law. This applies to our border area in the 15th and 16th centuries. Since then, the border course to Basel or to Switzerland has hardly changed. We also owe the beginnings of cartography around Basel to this oldest stone placement, as the first maps were mainly documentary evidence for boundary stone placements. For example, the oldest preserved map by Hans Bock from 1620 reported 82 boundary stones between Kleinhüningen and Grenzach, their number rose to 170 by 1870 and has now reached 218. This also results in the numbering from 1-150, which for additional stones is only extended by subdivisions with “a” and “b.”

Source: The right-bank border around Basel - by Gerhard Moehring in: Das Markgräfler Land, Volume 4/35, Issue 1/2 - 1973