In 1874 the county surveyor was called on to break down part of a standard section that was created in 1865. He finds the north and east quarter corner stones in place. He re-establishes the west and south quarter corners at mid-distance on a straight line between found section corner stones. He then sets a stone for the center corner. He also sets the midpoint of the line connecting the center corner and the west quarter corner. He does the same on the line connecting the south quarter corner and the southwest corner. The southwest quarter has thus been divided into the west half and east half thereof.
Over time, different surveyors have worked in all adjoining sections such that there are now iron monuments at each of the exterior section corners. Three small M&B tracts have been cut from this section, but, no surveys can be found. They were probably formed by writing the intent and filing a deed without benefit of an actual survey. No record survey exists for work inside the section.
Your potential client owns the west half of the southwest quarter of the section plus three additional small aliquot parts within the east half of the southwest quarter. Old fences exist along the edges of the perimeter of the total tract and along other property division lines throughout the section. All section lines fall, more or less, along the centerlines of gravel county roads. At this point you are being asked for a price quote.
Here is the challenge. How do you base the work required to provide the service?
Do you:
1) Plan to find the four existing quarter-corner monuments and the southwest corner monument and do a perfect mathematical solution therefrom?
2) Plan to find those monuments plus do a cursory search for the 1874 stones along the north and east sides of the southwest quarter and possibly adjust your lines to fit any stones found?
3) Do as in 2 above plus shoot in all evidence of fence locations relevant to your tract?
4) Question everything, including the correctness of the 1874 section breakdown such that you locate, then dig up, all modern monuments in search of the 1865 or 1874 stones; followed by shooting in all fences in all parts of the section; followed by shooting in all possible locations of the three small M&B tracts in the section; followed by additional research and alternative solutions until a final theory is accepted as being the best.
5) Some other approach?
BTW, this is a current potential project for me. Assume a somewhat treeless and easily-accessible terrain throughout the section. I'm more interested in the approach used by other surveyors in today's financial climate than a dollar and cents type estimate.
The 1874 Survey by the County Surveyor represents the original survey of the aliquot parcels therefore you must attempt to retrace it.
I would map the fences but whether or not they represent the best evidence of the 1874 boundaries is an open question; I can't say without a thorough field search.
This is not one for the Union Construction Staking crew; the actual LS needs to go out there on the ground himself.
Sounds like a typical resurvey project in the PLSS!
Keith
I'd say what's most important is not what surveyors did but rather what the landowners over time have accepted and relied upon (might follow what the surveyors did, might not).
How many times does a section attempt to get subdivided by the GLO draftsman rules in the Manual before it's right on the ground. Does it ever end?
Just more of the nerdy nightmare created by the original use of proportion to divide PLSS sections. I know my take ticks people off but it's the reality, it's just a continual mess. Trying to make it technically perfect ISN'T the answer, the law is.
>...the actual LS needs to go out there on the ground himself.
AGREED
> Assume a somewhat treeless and easily-accessible terrain throughout the section. I'm more interested in the approach used by other surveyors in today's financial climate than a dollar and cents type estimate.
I'd bid the job with the condition that the monuments are recoverable with a reasonable amount of research and physical effort on the ground. I'd make every effort to recover and retrace the footsteps of the 1874 county surveyor survey. His is the original of the east line. Also make every effort to recover the 1865 location of the southwest corner and the 1874 west, south and center quarter corners. That'll give you the west, south and north boundaries. I'd start by the newer evidence and work my way backwards toward the older evidence.
My bid to do the job would be based on recoverable monuments, however, my contract would also contain a provision for what happens when the monuments aren't directly recoverable with a reasonable amount of effort. It's not my fault if the landowners haven't maintained their corners over the years and replacing the monuments is not going to come out of my pocket. Replacing obliterated monuments can take a lot of effort and can cost the client a pretty penny. As soon as I've determined that the monuments are non-existent, I'll be calling the client to negotiate phase II of the contract.
Phase II will include recovery of any evidence that might lead to the most probable restoration of the obliterated corner positions. If there is no evidence to be found, then phase III gets really easy. I get to calculate the corner positions (accounting for the latitudinal curve) and set a shiny new monument.
JBS
What John said is a good approach.
One good thing I like about my job is we treat boundary as a process of investigation that takes what it takes. We do the research and field work simultaneously and the same people are involved in the entire process. I think it makes for a better product. Our attitude is that when the Survey is done and filed it will be around for 50 to 100 years so therefore when you divide what seems like a high cost by that amount of time it really isn't that expensive.
A lot of my experience with the boundary surveying business model is kind of similar to the construction project business model. How much for the Survey? This much dollars. OK, let me know when you are done, you have one week. This has a tendency to rush the process too much. Obviously sometimes this works well but there are times, often unexpected, that it leads to less than optimal results.
Does your state have statutes of repose or limitation? If so, established boundaries can take precedence over the terms of the description.
Remember, aliquot part descriptions are simply designators for area descriptions which are notoriously inaccurate.
Pay particular attention to Chap 6 of the '73 manual, especially tract segregation and document reformation procedures. You do not use patent reformation but you follow your state laws in deciding when and how corrections to the record description are made so that established boundaries are not moved to fit some fictional section subdivision process that may never have occured.
Once the land was patented, the entryman was not required to follow the manual in further subdividing their land but lawyers normally wrote the deeds using inaccurate descriptions.
If you have roads, check the county or township for their town road records.
If there are M&B descriptions, that usually means that owners did not use aliquot part procedures so the manual does not apply.
If you are working for the owner, make sure that they know that you may have to prepare correction instruments to make sure the record description meets the accuracy requirements that apply today because early methods were not capable of attaining the accuracy requirements we must meet now. If your client is not the owner, you are obligated to inform them if a record description is inaccurate and needs correcting.
The two paragraphs after the subheading "Background" in the July 2007 ALTA/ACSM Accuracy Standards can help you explain your obligations:
Background
The lines and corners on any property survey have uncertainty in location which is the result of (1) availability and condition of reference monuments, (2) occupation or possession lines as they may differ from record lines, (3) clarity or ambiguity of the record descriptions or plats of the surveyed tracts and its adjoiners and (4) Relative Positional Accuracy.
The first three sources of uncertainty must be weighed as evidence in the determination of where, in the professional surveyor's opinion, the boundary lines and corners should be placed. Relative Positional Accuracy is related to how accurately the surveyor is able to monument or report those positions.
Richard Schaut
