I repeat
I'm not the smartest surveyor, but I am thinking that maybe the grass and other foliage is eaten down low to the ground in a circle around the stake, and a goat tied to the stake might be a clue. If it has a sign next to it labeled "goat stake" that might tell you something. 😉
Accept the monument
I think this one bit of information may be the key to the entire puzzle.
There is a railroad about 1000' away and this point appears to be something used in the railway construction.
The railroad would have had the GLO notes and such to make their survey and they would have noted that the one 40 was in a different ownernship so a reasonable land surveyor would look for a corner, even if not of record. He may expect to find fences or a pin/pipe.
I'm now leaning to thinking that this was a temporary search point that just got left behind.
Or that someone else, oil/gas lease, water rights or about anything had crews that picked up this point along the RR and used it to mark a temporary spot where they thought the 1/16 corner should be near.
That it is very near just bothered me as it was online, which infers the use of survey equipment.
You have exhausted the records, the testimony from others and have found no reliance on this point. None at all.
This has been a good discussion, but based on all the evidence we have read then I would set a nice stamped point at the corner and tie this point in and use it as a RM if I left it in the ground. In fact, I would stamp RM on top of it to just make it a little more obvious to anyone that might find this and state all that on your plat.
I use the word harmony a lot when it comes to property corners and I fail to see any upset of the harmony by setting a new definable point at the true corner.
I repeat
Brian, I'd say you are well on your way to being a top boundary surveyor. Obviously you are deep into studying boundary law and have gained a very deep grasp of it. Soon I'll be asking your advise along with John's. Maybe being burned by fire has it's benefits in the long run. Sure sucks during the burn though!
Don
he doesn't know about the "arguing with the County Surveyor is like wrestling with a..." thing LOL ;-).
Mr Moe
When you, Larry, and Curly, get all done decipherin this corner, would you mind posting what you actually finally did? And, a brief story of why?
Thanks!
N
Nate
What you have is hearsay testimony not specific to a particular case.
The primary purpose of timberland is to harvest timber. To say that the boundary used to harvest the timber is not the real boundary does not make sense to me.
I can think of one particular case. We haven't finished the Survey yet because we aren't finished acquiring the property but it goes like this. There is a rough cut 2x4 set in the ground at the nominal location of the Center South 1/16th corner of Section 5. There is also an old Timber Company K-tag on a stump a few feet away clearly marked for the 1/16th corner (The date is early 60s, the company no longer exists). There is a recent clear cut by a huge timber company right up to this monument. So if it is not the corner then why are they stealing the neighbor's trees? The neighbor is a huge utility company.
However, I am open to discussion on this topic because you may be right.
Nate
> What you have is hearsay testimony not specific to a particular case.
>
> The primary purpose of timberland is to harvest timber. To say that the boundary used to harvest the timber is not the real boundary does not make sense to me.
>
The early half of my career was as a BLM cadastral surveyor, retracing whole townships in N. Ca which were largely fraudulant and for the most part wholly considered timberland with little other use.
Much of this land was checkerboard Southern Pacific and USFS and some Hearst Corp.
Very few GLO monuments were identified and the SP and Hearst Corp wanted to harvest some of the timber back in the 1950's. In certain areas, CBM's were set by them as cutting agreement corners.
About the time Sierra Pacific bought out the SP lands, the USFS decided to start harvesting some of these tracts of land.
Enter the BLM. Both sides wanted to know where all the boundaries were located.
In the investigative portion of the survey, we not only searched for original evidence, but also interviewed the land managers who were knowledgable as to many of the monumented positions. This is where CBM's were weeded out as they were not a faithful perpetuation of original, but rather simply an agreement for timber harvesting.
As federal interests were concerned, the CBMs carried little weight in the dependent resurveys. The owners representatives (the forestors I referred to earlier) were making no claim of bona fide right. They freely admitted that their entry was not based on good faith attempt at locating themselves in accordance to their title, but were instead just making an approximation.
Certainly, they may have had cause to protest our findings, but because the holdings were vast in nature and what was "gained" in one place was "lost" in another, there was no claim of ownership to the cutting agreement lines.
I currently perform private surveys primarily for both SPI and large ranches. In performing dependant retracements, I often come across undocumented monuments, fencelines, and other occupation evidence which I have to evaluate.
Much of the time I am concerned with retracing those lands as partioned by the original GLO patents, hence I am concerned with retracing the GLO plat and field notes.
Rarely do my clients try to claim ownership to these undocumented lines. Rather they are almost exclusively concerned with my determinations of the boundaries as granted in the original patents.
There of course are exceptions to that. Currently I am surveying a ranch which has a rich history of owner established section breakdown which is in large conflict with GLO and private survey evidence. This particular case does warrant recognition of landowner boundary establishement to the degree that it can be considered the controlling element.
Nate
That is helpful, thanks.
Every case is different. If foresters were marking corners without reference to the original survey then those monuments won't be acceptable.
Nate
Admittedly a very fine line sometimes. An owner's attempt at locating themselves can be viewed with different colored glasses depending on the sitting judge.
Nate
This is the kind of logic we MUST consider in these kinds of decisions.
N