The Texas GLO generally did a fairly good job of compiling the Official County Maps showing the pattern of metes and bounds land grants covering each county. Typically, each county map was improved over time as the true picture of the patchwork of grants was refined. This is an interesting example of a part of the Official Dimmit County Map that presents a problem I've never seen before. The Official County Map entirely omitted one grant to which the State had issued a patent on what appears otherwise to be a valid survey.
Existing GLO Map
and this is what a correct compilation of the County Map from records on file in the GLO would look like:
Revised GLO Map
The revised map is my work. The Official County Map still looks like that in the upper image. You'll note that the Moritz Reissig Survey No. 592 all but disappears in the revised version of the map. It's a junior survey that was fieldnoted in the office to cover more land than was almost certainly there at the time. In my revision, I've left it to the GLO drafters to decide how they want to note the existence of the file associated with the survey when the GLO version of the map is corrected.
The lesson to be drawn, I think, is that there's no substitute for actually examining the files, particularly when the Official County Map just looks odd.
good luck w/ the GLO correcting the map any time soon.
the latest greatest for Tarrant County is from 1943, as i recall, and has not been updated since even though there have been several gaps discovered and patented in the intervening years.
> good luck w/ the GLO correcting the map any time soon.
Well, the error in this case is that an entire patented survey is missing. I don't personally have any problem with noting a vacancy on a county map that didn't show one just by noting the Scrap File number. Probably about half or more of those "vacancies" never were, anyway.
As far as I can see, the main problem is just to insert a better picture into a scan of the old, incorrect county map. That's something that can be done digitally without redrawing the whole map, which would be an enormous job.
I've sent Surveying Division a tiff image of the revised map I've posted above, along with some information that the compiling draftsman overlooked in producing the mistaken existing map. It seems to me that there's an incentive to make the change since otherwise the errors on the map will continue to create needless chaos that will waste time and resources of the GLO staff.
That mistaken map has already drawn two vacancy applications and most recently has helped tremendously to muddle the question of the original locations of some land grant lines.
Good luck with the GLO! There are problems out near the Cotulla airport and
the GLO does not want to fix it. Some of the land has been patented twice.
> Good luck with the GLO! There are problems out near the Cotulla airport and
> the GLO does not want to fix it. Some of the land has been patented twice.
I assume you're not talking about the situation where a patent was canceled and reissued? Generally, the GLO has quite limited resources, so they don't go out looking for problems to fix but rely upon the affected landowners to hire surveyors to unscramble the mess.
I worked in the area. The surveyor who found the conflicts hopes the GLO will
cancel the first patent.
