:good:
I found one ...
What you might call a platted gap. A triangular shaped subdivision bordered on the hypotenuse by a railroad. Once they extended streets from the adjacent subdivisions, in about 1875, there was a tiny triangle in one corner with the railroad and two streets defining it's existence. It had no identifying block or lot number, it just existed. The Register of Deeds Office didn't assign it a page in the index book like the other lots/blocks. There is no record of it ever being legally transferred to anyone. Today, both streets have been vacated and the railroad abandoned so that tiny triangle is now many times bigger than it was originally.
There's a local attorney who has a side-line buying and reselling forgotten strips and triangles of land. He researches the parcel, gets a quitclaim from some party who may have a title interest, and then hold the parcels until a someone decides to develop an adjoining property. It's pretty sleazy (in my opinion), but I guess a surveyor could do this too if they wanted. I've come across a couple strips of land which were remainders of a larger conveyance, and which the original owner probably has no idea they even owned - for example, we surveyed an apartment complex which backs up to an interstate. Years ago, the southern adjoiner was a large square tract, but when the interstate came through, they left a triangle of land approximately 24' X 24' north of the interstate. The original adjoiner then sold everything south of the interstate for a shopping center. I'm not even sure he knows he retained any land south of the interstate, or cares. Granted, these are not true gaps, but the end result is the same, more or less.
Curiosity killed the cat...
Vaguely similar story in metro New Orleans. Local developer of several subdivisions did NOT dedicate land used for surface drainage canals to the government; he kept ownership of it for years. Major floods hit the area and local government got a bond passed to "upgrade" the drainage canals. The developer then filed suit preventing the local government from "upgrading" the canals he owned. Local government howled, it went to court, and the local developer then got paid a LOT of money to sell the drainage canals to the local government so they could then "upgrade" the condition of the canals. This happened 20-30 years ago.
Curiosity killed the cat...
> Vaguely similar story in metro New Orleans. Local developer of several subdivisions did NOT dedicate land used for surface drainage canals to the government; he kept ownership of it for years. Major floods hit the area and local government got a bond passed to "upgrade" the drainage canals. The developer then filed suit preventing the local government from "upgrading" the canals he owned. Local government howled, it went to court, and the local developer then got paid a LOT of money to sell the drainage canals to the local government so they could then "upgrade" the condition of the canals. This happened 20-30 years ago.
Even eminent domain has it's price....:-P
I found one ...
> What you might call a platted gap. A triangular shaped subdivision bordered on the hypotenuse by a railroad. Once they extended streets from the adjacent subdivisions, in about 1875, there was a tiny triangle in one corner with the railroad and two streets defining it's existence. It had no identifying block or lot number, it just existed. The Register of Deeds Office didn't assign it a page in the index book like the other lots/blocks. There is no record of it ever being legally transferred to anyone. Today, both streets have been vacated and the railroad abandoned so that tiny triangle is now many times bigger than it was originally.
Kind of reminds me of The Hess Triangle
I found one ...
Had a similar situation a few years ago where a 1.75 sq.ft. triangle (a hiatus between three overlapping mineral surveys) held up a major subdivision for a year due to ownership issues. It showed up on the BLM master title plat, but had been missed by the records office. The owner ended up being a wealthy industrialist who "didn't want to be bothered":pissed: over such a small tract of land.
I, too, once discovered a "gap". It definitely had an owner, and I knew right away who it was (well, mostly). But I had to explain to the City and the Title Company what the problem was.
I was surveying some property for a subdivision. This land was part of the "Weber Grant" in Stockton, California. The Weber Grant was an old Mexican land grant more properly called "El Rancho Del Campo De Los Franceses". But it was given to Captain Charles Weber so it is more commonly called the "Weber Grant". Anyway...
The eastern boundary of my property was clear. I had a monument at the northeast corner that was well accepted and fit the deeds and everything. So that was no problem. The problem came up when the City wanted the subdivision to have a connection to a public right-of-way to the east. According to the assessor's maps, 13th street came right up to my eastern boundary. But, that was not correct. I had found monuments for the property to the east and they were consistent with the mapping. And when you laid out the western boundary of the property to the east, it was about 30 feet away from my eastern boundary.
I spent a lot of time with the title company digging up old deeds and maps. I was able to trace back to some very old maps. The Weber Grant was unofficially laid out in "sections". But they aren't 80 chains per side. And many weren't monumented at all. And there isn't a single map of this original "breakdown". But some old deeds still referenced "sections" in the Weber Grant. I dug up a very old map that showed a survey of a portion of the section of the Weber Grant that my property was in. It showed the NW and SW corners of this "section" and the north, south, and west lines of this "section". And it had distances over to a eastern boundary of the land on the map. But that eastern boundary wasn't identified as anything other than the boundary. The map created a few parcels and the property I was mapping was within one of those parcels. I also found a corresponding deed that had conveyed parcels from Captain Weber referencing this map.
Then, I found similar maps for the property to the east. They showed the NE and SE corner of the "section" and also the north, east, and south lines of the "section". There was a distance over to the west boundary of the map, but no label on that line. The deeds reflected these maps as well.
When you put these maps together with the monumentation that I had found (monuments that had been perpetuated for almost 100 years), there was a clear "gap" between these two maps that was about 30' wide.
The final piece that helped me convince the City was that I had found an old county plat of some improvements where the County had resurfaced a street. On the plat (which wasn't recorded) there were monuments shown, bearings and distances, and all of the necessary line work and a strip of land (north of my subdivision, but in line with my "gap") that said "area of unknown ownership".
Of course, I knew as soon as I had found this "gap" that the owner would be Captain Weber himself. Although, he had long since passed and so I told the title company that it would be held by his heirs or assigns. And it turns out that someone (a "great nephew") was administering the few remaining land holdings of the Weber family. The City was able to get their right-of-way granted and also have a nice little area of "uncertain title" cleared right up in one fell swoop!
Once again, the surveyor saves the day!
