Point Udall

Point Udall is where America's day begins. The easternmost point of the United States — the rocky tip of St. Croix's East End, where the road runs out — was named in 1969 for Stewart Udall, JFK and LBJ's Interior Secretary, who'd dedicated Buck Island Reef by cutting the ribbon underwater in swim trunks. The point itself is Upper Cretaceous volcanic rock rotated up out of the sea, the eastern edge of everything under the flag.

The monument came for the millennium — the giant sundial built above the point for New Year's 2000, marking the azimuth of the first sunrise to touch American soil that year. About 150 people showed up at dawn on January 1, 2000 — Governor Turnbull, Mo Udall's nephew, twenty doves, the flags raised as the sun came up over the Atlantic on the country's eastern edge.

The geography carries a symmetry only the Udalls could manage: the country's westernmost point, in Guam, is also Point Udall — named for Stewart's brother Mo, the Arizona congressman. When Mo died in 1998, Clinton's statement conflated them into one line that's still quoted: 'The sun will never set on the legacy of Mo Udall' — the sun rising on Stewart's point in the Caribbean and setting past Mo's in the Pacific.

Point Udall is the archive's sunrise file — the easternmost point of the United States on St. Croix, named for Stewart Udall, where the Millennium Monument sundial marks the first American sunrise of the year 2000.