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Property boundaries location with 100-year survey plan
Hello Community,
I want to start from afar.
I have a 100-year survey plan that gives me 5 I.P. and 1 milepost as reference points. The surrounding area is the wilderness. I need to find the points to calculate property boundaries. I have attached the plans.
I assume the right strategy would be to get GNSS equipment. It is easy but what next?
There is a small lake and a creek mouth that have been located. However, iron pipes on the lakeshore are not found with a metal detector.
Could we begin this topic with advice on where to proceed?
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10 Replies
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How to proceed?
Simple! You need to find those 5 ip’s and that milepost.
But not easy. You are going to be doing some digging.
Once you have the first, the rest get easier to find. Three is a minimum
As well as holes in the ground, I’d be looking in the archives for the original field notes, for any survey that might connect to yours, and for anything surrounding. Calc your external boundaries and start from there
You cant rely on the lake or the creek other than for an initial guess
And just because your metal detector hasn’t gone off, does not mean the mark is not there
Good luck.
BTW – your docx plans dont work for me
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Thanks.
The creek mouth can be identified uniquely and is the only location that can be tied with tolerance +/- 5 meters to the property boundaries. At least, it can help find locations of IPs. This is the plan.
Under digging, do you mean, if the metal detector wouldn’t help, literally dig out and check the top soil layer to find a pipe? If it was a survey pipe, should it survive over 100 years?
What do you mean that doc files didn’t work for you? Can you open them?
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I can download them using the three dot icon when I click on the file.
There are three mining claims that I presume were “proved up” and now are parcels in private hands?
This isn’t a mineral survey is it? In the US that’s sometimes a specialized survey, and you might need someone licensed to do that.
Otherwise, I would try to find everything, if you can’t then typically there is a patchwork of surrounding claims that will need to be put together to get your parcels defined. I’m assuming the Mile Marker is an old government survey like a township in the US and that can be replaced using the rules laid out governing retracement surveys. Those will include secondary ties as shown on the plats.
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Thanks.
Your guess is correct. No, there is no need for the license.
I am not sure that I will be able to retrieve surrounding surveys quickly. I need a guidance for that. I am not a land surveyor.
All I can do is try to find those pipes. I am not sure about the milepost as it is the most remote and I am in doubt about the alleged location of it.
I plan to come to that creek mouth, set my R12 to 0,0, and try to find other points with bearings and distances that I have already calculated.
Will it work giving me approximate locations?
Then I could check thoroughly with the understanding that I am in the right spot.
Also, about those 2 IPs at the lakeshore.
What does their location mean to you? Should it be correct to assume that the surveyor put them at the edge of the water just because it would be easy to find them later as deeper in the forest there are no ties at all?
What makes to set a corner of the parcel inside the lake?
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> Under digging, do you mean, if the metal detector wouldn’t help, literally dig out and check the top soil layer to find a pipe?
Yes, exactly
> If it was a survey pipe, should it survive over 100 years?
Quite probably – they do around here. And even if you dont find the pipe you may find evidence – rust, discoloured soil that sort of thing
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Just the fact that I have double-checked.
There are 23 parcels in total.
The total length of the continuous outside boundary is 9,361.573 m. When I built it in software, I got the HD 13.930 m between the ends of the boundary line.
How it can be evaluated? Is it too much for that survey done by different surveyors in different years?
I have a strong hope that the iron pipes can be found and this gives me a chance to get away with the most economical solution to set out the property boundaries by a land surveyor.
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This reply was modified 2 days, 15 hours ago by tilsit.
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This reply was modified 2 days, 15 hours ago by
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This is advanced level land surveying, it really would be best to get a local surveyor experienced in these tracts if one is available.
Often there will be more recent records in an office somewhere identifying monument locations. Are there no secondary records in a land office? Seems unusual for 100 years to go by and no improvements helping to put you on the points.
I’m getting the impression that you’re frustrated looking, normally before even putting boots on the ground there is research, attempts to place the parcels in the real world for searches, then interviewing surrounding landowners. It’s not easy.
Yes, I would want to use GPS in some capacity for this, bring in ortho photos, place the tracts in the real world using them, develop actual geographic locations as a best guess and then go to the field after all the research is done.
As far as the stream,,,,,,, often they were eyeballed on the drawing so I’d give it little importance.
Also, they are in feet (chains), I would survey in feet not meters.
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This is an unorganized land in the northeast part of the district. The 2011 census tells there is 0 population. So, not surprisingly there were no new surveys in this area and around due to its cost and no purpose. Except for some cottages closer to Quebec, there is nothing within 15 kilometers around there.
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It appears that 11344 was a claim of 80 acres and was split into two claims, and possibly the division line isn’t staked. There are two basis of bearings indicated, one being astronomic and one being the south line of 11344.
I would use astronomic north for all calculations.
I don’t know if that’s possible for the programs you’re using, but early 1900’s surveyors often used various ways of staying on true north.
Mile marker 4 of the Ossian Township survey looks like the place to begin, try to reference that position with geographic coordinates, calculate the first point of 11185 using N88d10E, 5055.6 feet and that would be the POB of 11185, continue around it using true north bearings. I’d do the same with the 9000m figure you already calculated, adjust the lines to true north and some of the misclosure may resolve itself.
I would not use 0,0 for a starting coordinate, I would calculate up the figures using my base point as MM4 and place maybe 10,000 by 10,000 on it or 32,808.33 ft.
Nearest minute and nearest 0.00 chains will create some math misclosure, neglecting true north rotations will add to that.
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Thanks a lot.
I am hitting the road tomorrow and going to be in the area tonight. After, 2 days of hard work.
I can go to that 4 mile point using the GPS of TCS7. It wasn’t relocated. Ossian township is still there as 100 years ago and has 0 inhabitants. When I look at aerial photos on google maps I do not see an appropriate location or any cuttings. It looks like the post is in the forest. That gives me hope that it is still there.
I use AutoCAD for my plans, bearings, and distances. The only question is will the coordinates be the same when I convert them from a local system to UTM?
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