Hello, I am a first year college student who is new to Surveying and was wondering where I could find the Benchmarks for Connecticut. I have previously worked on a project in Florida, and they had Palm Bay Benchmarks for Palm Bay County. I have searched for a few hours but have found no success. I am looking for any benchmark in Stamford, Connecticut
Excuse the potential silly question, are the given coordinates to a benchmark using imperial or metric?
Looking at the datasheet, there seems to be a mix of metric and feet which seems needlessly complicated and potentially confusing. Why not do everything in one unit of measurement, imperial, in this case?
Lat-lon is neither metric nor imperial.<div>
NGS does all dustances in metric. They provide conversions to feet as a convenience to users who are working in feet.
For state plane coordinates their conversion uses survey feet or international feet as defined for that state. In the upcoming new system that split will go away.
For elevations and local distances, it does not matter which foot is used, as the users can't measure the difference at that scale.
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go to the Stamford County courthouse, they should have all the benchmark maps there. you have to be a registered surveyor to look at the maps though, I forgot that part. download the app US topo maps and search your area. that might help.
Feet is what we use in the USA, metric is what we use internationally.
The NGS link given above is a starting point. That will give you what the NGS has. There may also be local resources - city, county, state (usually the DOT). I suggest emailing the Stamford, CT City Engineer with your question.
"...you have to be a registered surveyor to look at the maps..."
This seems odd. Why should the courthouse staff care who looks at the maps? It's public record. Does anyone know the reasoning for this?
Does anyone know the reasoning for this?
Bureaucracy; duh...
Sorry about the mistake, but I was actually looking for Section Corner. I need them to align my plat. When I was working in florida they had Labins which gave exact coordinates. Sorry for the mistake.
Connecticut abolished county government in 1960. Since then counties have only been geographical regions. Stamford is in Fairfield County. There is a superior court located in Stamford; I don't know the exact area covered by that court.
In Connecticut, land records, including survey maps, are held by town clerks. The Stamford City Clerk's website ( https://www.stamfordct.gov/government/town-clerk/land-records) claims the land records vault is open to the public; I've never been there so I have no first hand knowledge. I don't know if there are any maps devoted to official survey marks. Finding one by browsing through private land surveys seems laborious to me.
Another point of confusion is that the city and town clerk is one and the same person, presently Lyda Ruijter. I guess that most or all of the cities used to be towns and Connecticut was especially sloppy about transitioning the job title.
Section corners are features of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). Wikipedia has an overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System
Connecticut was divided up by royal land grants long before the United States was formed, and even longer before the PLSS was invented. I don't know what approach would substitute for whatever it was you did in Florida.
Thanks, Ashton, for pointing out the lack of section corners in our Colonial States.
