In speaking with a 2nd generation surveyor named Les Grant (R.C.E. 7704) here in Santa Barbara California in around 2004 before he passed on, he told me of work his father had done in the area where they came upon 1890's surveyors describing object set for corners that the previous surveyors had not set. Of course the bearings and distances from this points did not match the notes of the surveyors they were supposedly retracing.
Les and his father did some research in California in about the late 1930's and found a couple of other surveyors that had seen the same problems with 1890's era notes. One of them had traced it back to a service offered by young men in college i the San Francisco area. They had created a service for surveyors that had on e of them going to the GLO office and sourcing the original notes for an area a GLO surveyor was planning on contracting a survey for and hand copied the notes.
They then purchased bulk time from Southern Pacific telegraph at hours when there was little of no usage, had their own morse code operators and keyed the transcribed notes to another partner somewhere near where the surveyor was who was planning on using the notes in the field.
The problem was that there were 4 opportunities for reading and writing errors, and many errors were carried into the notes. Of course surveyors would attempt to measure into the surveys they were retracing, and not find anything of the original survey, because they really didn't know which descriptions were good and which were bad. Whereupon some of those surveyors pretended they found original monuments, made descriptions up, and proceeded to set new alternative corners for sections usually hundreds of feet from the originals.
The father and son team basically concluded from their research that the practice and the fraud it inadvertently generated was discovered before 1900 and stopped. But still these surveys run alongside of earlier surveys and may or not be used. When not used, the original survey is still the legally binding survey, because of the problems associated with the records used for the later alternate.
I have a posted a thread;
Which details a problem that originates with an 1891 survey where the surveyor obviously has no idea of what was set by the surveyor he is supposed to be retracing.
The problem is that he measured into a location that measured well from sections corners he found; perhaps miles away, his notes do not say, for obvious reasons; then he makes up a monument description, because without having a beginning point said to be of the original, he could not go to work and collect his pay.
I'm wondering if any other surveyors have heard of this use of the telegraph that was discovered, then stopped because of the problems it created?
