"thence xxx.xx feet to the center of a creek, being subject to natural gradual erosion and accretion, being the boundary of this parcel; thence along the center on the creek the following courses..."
(or whatever key words and phrases are commonly used for ambulatory boundaries in your jurisdiction)
if someone wants to reword your description (or survey) that is beyond your control, but you have left a trail of your survey
JPH, post: 413831, member: 6636 wrote: It's getting to be a long-ish thread, but you must've missed the part where I mentioned using a tie line for closure. Also, who's checking my area? If it's another surveyor, then he should be doing his own creek location and coming up with his own area, which shouldn't match mine, since a creek's location is fairly inaccurate.
Bottom line, a creek and any water boundary is moving and not in a fixed location, and assigning B-D to the creek gives the false impression that it is fixed. As far as erosion and accretion go, if the boundary is the creek, then it remains the creek, and any long-term gain or loss of land will be reflected in a more recent survey. If it's a sudden change, I'm thinking that it'd be somewhat known, and as said, I would have the location of the creek in my working dwg, and it'd be a different thing altogether if that's the point of the survey.
However if there is a flood and the creek reroutes, how will another surveyor know where the original was.
JPH, post: 413453, member: 6636 wrote: Come on, Kris, it's not BS. You may not like it, and it may not be how you do your thing in Texas, but it's how it's done in the north, seriously, I'm not kidding you. No reason to get angry about it, man.
If the point of the survey is to show the, "progression of a waterway", then, sure I'd show it. But a normal boundary survey, no.
To be fair, I'm not angry. I'm just an adamant surveyor. 🙂 Hey, if that's what is normal up where you're at, then far be it from me to change the things yall do, but, without the meanders, we can't tell if the water way has changed. While it's true that the boundary "ebbs and flows" with the waterway, it's also true that it CAN stay affixed if an avlusive move has happened. While this is VERY hard to prove "when" it happened, with the old meanders, it can be shown "where" it was and taken from there.
Also, most every deed since 1960 in my part of Texas, that meandered a creek, has the meanders in the deed. It's not really an issue and doesn't clutter up anything.
I'm not mad, but I do feel differently about this than you. 🙂
JPH, post: 413831, member: 6636 wrote: It's getting to be a long-ish thread, but you must've missed the part where I mentioned using a tie line for closure. Also, who's checking my area? If it's another surveyor, then he should be doing his own creek location and coming up with his own area, which shouldn't match mine, since a creek's location is fairly inaccurate.
Bottom line, a creek and any water boundary is moving and not in a fixed location, and assigning B-D to the creek gives the false impression that it is fixed. As far as erosion and accretion go, if the boundary is the creek, then it remains the creek, and any long-term gain or loss of land will be reflected in a more recent survey. If it's a sudden change, I'm thinking that it'd be somewhat known, and as said, I would have the location of the creek in my working dwg, and it'd be a different thing altogether if that's the point of the survey.
If people are mistaking a meandered body of a water as a fixed boundary the problem is probably that the plat is not very clear.
I don't quite get what the closure tie is for. What purpose does it serve? If the meanders where also shown it might be usefull to isolate a blunder, but without the meanders it doesn't show any one that the acreage you calculated was not based on a blunder, or if there is a measurment blunder.
I can't count the number of times I would have been completely screwed if the GLO/BLM didn't report their meanders.
An update on this: I researched the title back to where the tracts in question were partitioned, and the original partition calls for the "meanders of the creek" so I believe that clears it up for me. As the descriptions were perpetuated over the years calls for things like monumentation an calling for the creek got left out. I'm putting the call for the center of the creek back in. It seems pretty basic now that I look back on it.
Yep, the (moving) creek is the boundary.
But the day is starting slow, so I would like to start an argument :).
1. How do we justify going back through past deeds and "picking out the right one"?
2. Yes, we can re-write the legal to better reflect the original intent, but does anyone feel we should address the gaps/overlaps of the CURRENT deeds?
3. If #2 is yes, the gaps/overlaps should be resolved, then how? Quit claim deed? Surveyors can't write deeds so an attorney is required. Maybe a court if there is a dispute. Agreed? Did we make things better or worse?
RPLS#, I would like to know how you finish this survey. How did you address the situation with your client? Did you explain it to the adjoiner? How did this all go over? I suspect you will be seen as a hero or a zero. I hope a hero, of course!
RPLS#, post: 415099, member: 12280 wrote: An update on this: I researched the title back to where the tracts in question were partitioned, and the original partition calls for the "meanders of the creek" so I believe that clears it up for me. As the descriptions were perpetuated over the years calls for things like monumentation an calling for the creek got left out. I'm putting the call for the center of the creek back in. It seems pretty basic now that I look back on it.
Wow! It's almost as if my initial advice to you was clairvoyant. 🙂
Don't quit digging until you know that answer to all the questions of substance. Finding the answers is easy, knowing the questions, well that's why people play Wheel of Fortune and not Jeopardy.
The current deeds are nothing more than a starting place. Digging back can be absolutely essential at times. Not every job, but many of them.
One example. We recently had a job where the absentee client said from the start that they would have made up a description to cut off the five acres with the house from the remainder of the quarter section but the neighbor saw what they were planning and informed them that the fence/old tree row WAS NOT the property line. He said he didn't know exactly where it was but he had been told it lined up with the center of a county road that ran south from the true quarter corner. The fence/old tree row was very close to forty feet east of the center of the county road intersection.
That area had been nothing but tall prairie grass at the time of the Government survey in the early 1850's when the New York Indians (a grouping of a dozen or more tribes originally from Minnesota to Maine) turned it over to the US. A few miles distant was Osage Indian lands that would not be surveyed for about 15 more years. The Government survey distances fit the apparent occupied locations of section corners and quarter corners around the section fairly well. The center of the county road intersection was almost dead on. Courthouse research showed the first significant thing to occur in the subject section was the establishment of a county road to begin at the north quarter corner, run through the center and south quarter corner, then extend through the next section to the south until it stopped at the river in 1865. The portion of that road passing through the subject section (width of 60 feet) was vacated in 1875 when other roads had been opened around the perimeter of the section. So there had been a ten-year period when the earliest settlers were arriving that fences logically would have been built 30 feet off of the quarter section line. A few years after the vacation of the road, the owner of the southeast quarter deeded his west 30 feet of property to the owner of the southwest quarter. This suggests the old tree row we found was assumed to be 30 feet east of the quarter section line in agreement with the edge of the roadway. It turned out to be about 20 feet off at the center corner and 40 feet off at the south quarter corner as confirmed by finding the stone set for the center corner in 1875. The error between the line and the fence averaged 30 feet.
In about 1910 both the southwest and southeast quarter sections came under common ownership until the 1930's. The owner lost it all to a bank. When the bank sold their interests they first sold just the southwest quarter, then the southeast quarter. The old 30' strip went away, by deed.
The client's family had always maintained a lane along the east side of their property, west of the fence/old tree row, where the old road that they knew nothing about had once been. He could recall from his youth in the 60's and 70's that the neighbor to the east would sometimes use that same lane to get to a gate in the common fence to get to his pasture. No big deal, just a neighborly thing. No one really gave it any thought.
Discovering the history of the old road and the thirty-foot strip provided some comfort to the client in learning that the family deed did not specifically lay claim to the lane area. I suppose they could have made some attempt to claim the odd wedge but the expense to do so would have been far greater than the value of the land. Besides, they like the neighbor to the east. And, the neighbor to the east isn't going to spend a fortune tearing out his old fence and building a new one on the line, so the use will stay the same as it has been for many decades.
I'm working on a boundary now that the deed describes the center of a creek (A) on the west side to where another creek coming from the east (B) intersects that runs along the north side. All the deed says is that it goes down the center of Creek A to a maple tree on the north bank of Creek B. Then up Creek B for 4 calls that generally follow but do not fall in Creek B to a stone on the south bank of Creek B. The 1st call crosses Creek B, the rest sort of follow an old fence on the south side of the creek, which varies from 20-100' from the creek. There was a recent survey of the adjoiner on the north that retraces the exact same calls, with pins set generally in the old fence. When I traced the adjoiner deed back, there was an additional tract added to the main tract to the north in one of the old deeds. Main tract description called for the center of Creek B. All the added tract description says is that it is all of the property owned by X (former owner to the north many years ago) that lies on the south side of Creek B.
Do not stop when you are out of budget -
It is possible that you can NOT determine whether the creek controls or not, and that would be an acceptable outcome. Until then, locate the creek and show it and the deed lines where they lie. If the creeks are used for watering stock, or fishing or irrigating by both adjoiners, then the likely intent is centered along the creek. Ask and research until you are confident. good luck!
flyin solo, post: 413417, member: 8089 wrote: Hahaha. There's, of course, the other end of it: bout a year ago I followed some kind soul who generously decided to set PKs and spindles at every 10"+ deflection (about every 45') down a mile of creekbed...
glad to hear this worked itself out- it jogged my memory in relation to this earlier post of mine in terms of the cans of worms we can open. the same survey wherein all these nails and spindles were set contained a bust along this creek. 99% sure it was due to a quadrant error (NE instead of NW). in trying to determine the source, i ran up the deed from the adjoiner on the other side of the creek. turns out that deed (different surveyor) had the identical calls along the creek (in reverse), including the bust. that, in and of itself, didn't do much to solve the problem at hand, but it certainly gave me a good idea on what to expect out of any future surveys i saw with a certain name affixed to them.
