Butler says he was hiking near his home in the Douglas State Forest with a topographical map in 1998 when he decided to look for the point where the three southern New England states meet. Dan Webb, the chief border surveyor with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah, helped place a granite monument on the Utah-Arizona-Nevada corner last fall with cooperation from all three states. The spot is about 15 miles off Interstate 70 and hard to access, even with a four-wheel drive vehicle, he said. [...] there were flags in the ground and other indications that tourists had found the spot. In Thompson, Connecticut, town officials have worked for the last several years to improve access to the southern New England tripoint, where Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts meet. Visitors can now hike or ride a bicycle down the stone-dust covered Airline Trail to a hiking trail created by the town that leads to the tripoint.