One of the tasks of the afternoon was to search for the corner nominally 950 varas (2640 ft.) South of the large 1875-vintage rock mound mentioned in a post yesterday.
I found what I take to be the remains of the rock mound at a distance of 936.960 varas (Grid) from the large mound and on a bearing nearly exactly agreeing with the 1875 surveyor's variation, but at first impression I didn't see either of the bearing trees that the 1875 surveyor called for at the corner. Naturally, this raised all sorts of alternate theories that called what I thought to be the remains of a mound into question.
A wire fence had been built through the position where I thought the remains of the mound to be, so it's unlikely that the fence builders had not removed some of the rocks that would otherwise have interfered with the bottom strands of fence wire. The intelligent fence builders just set the fence off the survey line by a couple of feet to preserve all the marks intact, but the work of building fence in that rough, rocky country probably didn't attract the smartest folks in the county.
Having convinced myself that no obvious candidates for the two oaks reported marked as bearing trees in 1875 remained standing, I began to look for the remains of dead trees.
This was what a little work with a shovel and whisk broom turned up. The rod and cap marker is, of course, my addition.
Sections of the trunk were lying nearby on the ground in an advanced state of decay.
Impressive. Great job, Kent! I always enjoy hearing about your retracements. If you didn't have collateral evidence, how would you know they were oak roots?
> Impressive. Great job, Kent! I always enjoy hearing about your retracements. If you didn't have collateral evidence, how would you know they were oak roots?
In that particular setting, there are basically two choices: Live Oak (Q. virginiana) and Cedar (J. ashei). The oak wood is recognizable by its rays and the roots have a markedly different form. The decayed trunk of the tree lying on the ground by the stump remains had rays in it and the roots had forms characteristic of Live Oak.
Another clue is that stumps of Cedars in that locality appear to take centuries to rot away unless a fire burns them up, and there was no charring on any of the other very old cedar stumps in the vicinity, stumps that one would deduce from the size of the second growth cedars around them were probably the remains of trees cut more than 100 years ago. So, the fact that most of the stump had rotted also indicated that it wasn't a cedar.
If it were critical, I'm sure a person could have the wood identified at a forestry laboratory.
That makes sense. I wonder how in depth a regular survey crew would have gone. And all along, I've been fooled into thinking there were no trees in Texas. Guess I watched too many westerns!
> I wonder how in depth a regular survey crew would have gone. And all along, I've been fooled into thinking there were no trees in Texas. Guess I watched too many westerns!
This particular project is one that I would never dream of sending employees out to work on. The project pretty much just has to all be done by one person who has the whole job in his or her head, from research to field investigation.
Sure, some of it, such as locating the highway right-of-way markers, is routine work that you could turn some junior folks loose on without losing any sleep, but the rest of the project is the sort of job that if I ran a typical survey factory operation, I'd pay a client not to ask me to do. These are the sorts of projects where it really takes one expert Texas surveyor experienced in this sort of work, on the ground, and without two assistants chattering away. On the whole, I think both would be close to a wash in terms of time, but only one leading to a successful outcome.