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Old Acreage records
I’m putting together a subdivision, part of the process is parceling the water to each tract. On the old (1884) records each 40 was assigned an area the total being 165 acres, then in 1965 a petition and map was produced to update the areas and submitted for review by the state. The new map showed 155 acres between the county road on the east which runs along the east section line and the ditch up the valley which would be the westerly boundary. The property is the S1/2 of Section 15. The new areas shown on the 1965 map were rejected and in the record the state recorded the original 1884 acreages.
So I figure areas for each parcel between the ditch and road and it’s 155 acres just like the 1965 map. When I’m meeting with the client I bring up the missing 10 acres since we may have to deal with it. He said it’s simple just show ten acres west of the ditch. He said it’s very unusual but the ditch runs for 3/4 of a mile through his property on the very crown of a ridge and you can water the lands on both sides. I run that area west of the ditch between the main break point and the ditch and sure enough there is 10 acres.
The farmer/rancher in 1883 dug in a ditch right along the crest of the ridge, he had to not only understand that the ditch would hold together plus there weren’t any humps, depressions, steep slopes to deter that ditch for almost a mile,,,,,,,,,I’ve never seen anything like it. This is broken country, big draws, foothills of the mountains, intersecting flowlines,,,,,,, to have a slope like that is very unlikely. Not only did they figure out how to place the ditch, they knew how many acres there were in each 40 between the break in the ridge and the section line, it’s amazing really. I doubt that these areas were surveyed by anyone with transits and chains, probably some taping or pacing by the landowner from found corner monuments and then they calculated from there to get the numbers.
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3 Replies
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Just a guess but I imagine those folks from 1884 were a lot smarter than we give them credit for and am sure they used some higher level math and tools of the time to accomplish this feat of great skill.
Now compare that to one I was sent today of a triangle piece of property that fails to close by 60 feet and no side is longer than 290 feet on the plat.
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Just a guess but I imagine those folks from 1884 were a lot smarter than we give them credit for and am sure they used some higher level math and tools of the time to accomplish this feat of great skill.
Now compare that to one I was sent today of a triangle piece of property that fails to close by 60 feet and no side is longer than 290 feet on the plat.
A little more history: the water was allocated from 1880 to 1885 for this drainage area, I presume ditches were all constructed by 1885, however the record at that time didn’t include the ditches or how the acreages were calculated only that the NESW would get 20 Ac and the SWSE would get 25 Ac. adding 120 for the remaining three 40’s and you end up with 165.
The land wasn’t patented until 1891, first the NE4, then the S2, then the NW4 all happened within about 5 months, three different owners. At some point, probably before 1900 a fence line was constructed intersecting at the C1/4, running along the entire east west centerline and from the C1/4 to the N1/4.
Fast forward to the late 1970’s and the NE1/4 was subdivided and a two bit rebar showed up as the SW corner of the subdivision at the fence intersection which I presume was about 80 years old at the time.
Then the S1/2 was retraced by a surveyor in the 1990’s and he monumented all the section corners for the S1/2 including the C1/4 which switched from a rebar to a 3″ cap.
My survey is accepting the 3″ caps and the south line of the subdivision, also the fence line is almost right along the east west line. If I were to do a math breakdown I would be about 15′ east and 2′ south of the subdivision corner. Of course that would put the west line of the lots for the subdivision in the NE1/4 in question There are some surveyors who would do that, I’m not one of them.
Someone, probably the landowners themselves broke down Section 15 before 1900. I very much doubt it was a “Surveyor” I would imagine knowing the topo of the area it may well have been three guys with staffs who ran line between the north and south 1/4’s and the east and west 1/4’s. That would have been exactly “buy the book”. Might have taken the three guys the whole afternoon to do it, however it was done there is no record, but I’m using the historical evidence anyway.
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I saw the byline and all I could say is that most everything is old acreage.
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