RADAR, post: 415538, member: 413 wrote: Field Work
All fieldwork will be related to the NAD 83 datum through a control network of TxDOT survey points established before the commencement of the boundary survey. Surveys may be performed by GPS techniques, such as real-time kinematic methods in terrain suitable for their employment.Conventional survey methods may be needed in wooded, urban, or mountainous environments, or a mixture of GPS receivers and conventional total stations. Survey techniques shall comply with the procedures specified in Chapter 3, Preliminary Surveying, of this manual. The surveyor will compute state plane coordinates on the Texas Plane Coordinate System for all survey measurements. Surface coordinates will be computed using methods acceptable to TxDOT.
After the preliminary office research is complete, the surveyor will plan the field work based upon the results of the preliminary report. The working sketch will indicate what original corners may be recovered. An original corner that is well known and its use accepted by the local surveying profession is often the most effective beginning point. A careful inspection of the working sketch will frequently reveal the footsteps of the original surveyor that must be retraced for a defensible survey.
The courts have established the duty of the modern boundary surveyor to be the retracement of the footsteps of the original locating surveyor (Vanishing Footsteps of the Original Surveyor, Clayton Orn, Report of the Fifth Texas Surveyors Short Course Conference, 1952). The surveyor shall exert every reasonable effort to recover the corners established by the original surveyors of the grants included in the project area.
The question is not where an entirely accurate survey would locate the lines, but wheredid the original survey locate such lines (A Treatise on the Law of Surveying and Boundaries, F.E. Clark, 1939). This may require multiple visits to the vicinity to search for the best remaining evidence.
The surveyor will begin by locating or retracing as many corners of the original grants as required to construct the boundaries of the lands included in the project for future takings. Subsequent to locating the original grant boundaries and preparing a boundary construction, the surveyor may locate corners and lines of any junior survey interior to the original grants. In this manner, the surveyor will build up a logical scheme of boundary construction.
sounds nice and good. problem being- still- has to do with TxDOT and what it wants to do with its sacrosanct cake. the underlying issue to me in regard to the vast majority of these older right-of-way descriptions and conveyances is that they were concocted based upon substandard practices (possibly and probably beginning in the field, possibly and probably precluding the involvement of what you and i would accept as a properly trained and licensed surveyor, but certainly in the mapping and description of the tracts). so if we execute our duty to retrace the original surveyor for these particular conveyances, that in and of itself constitutes a substandard level of practice (by today's or yesterday's requirements). if i'm hired to do a right-of-way take (which i have done plenty) i'm surveying/abstracting- at minimum- the boundary lines between adjoining tracts fronting the right-of-way (most of the time that means surveying the entire parent tract from which the conveyance is taken). TxDOT seemed to forego that practice (or, at least, recording any evidence that they did otherwise). but good luck fighting with TxDOT. I admittedly have no clue how things work with the Washington DOT or Idaho or anywhere else. but TxDOT says "we have 100-feet" you can bet they do. now, you may once in every blue moon have a client with the cash on hand to do battle with TxDOT, but i don't personally know of any land surveyors who do. i've done route retracements where a client bought several thousand acres with a couple miles of TxDOT frontage. in one particular case the map was a nightmare- curve data made no sense, stationing on the map disagreed with as-built paving, bridges, intake structures and monuments by several HUNDRED feet. the curve in the road, as monumented, had like 8 degrees of delta more than called on the plans. call TxDOT and talk to them about it, they seemingly have no interest (more likely no budget) to rectify the situation, and clearly have known about it for a lot longer than i have (probably decades). "just lop a few hundred feet out of the tangent and please leave us alone with this" was the gist of the answer. again- you or I or anyone else tries that and good luck at the next board meeting...
RADAR, post: 415538, member: 413 wrote: excerpt from TxDOT Manual
Field Work
All fieldwork will be related to the NAD 83 datum through a control network of TxDOT survey points established before the commencement of the boundary survey. .
Your quote refers mostly to methods of survey preliminary to the construction of highways. Here is a section from a DOT survey manual that is more appropriate to the original question that was posed by Jim.
This advice will verify that it is the base line (center line) that is the actual surveyed line to follow.
The article by Calder makes the erroneous assumption that the boundary markers of a highway are the "original" monuments. They are not. The surveyor's objective is to establish the base line by a reasonable method using evidence that is found including the right of way markers.
this map. build it out from start to stop, then go run a traverse down the length of it. you'll end up a quarter mile shy (and maybe that far west) of where you think you will.
not my real name, post: 415549, member: 8199 wrote: Your quote refers mostly to methods of survey preliminary construction of highways. Here is a section from a DOT survey manual that is more appropriate to the original question that was posed by Jim.
and there it is. the best witness, as far as i'm concerned, would be the iron pipe or stone mound that was in place at an angle point or back corner both at the time of the conveyance and at the time i went back to follow in somebody's footsteps- not the monuments that, as kent has correctly stated, were set using some undetermined yet certainly substandard method by some undetermined yet almost certainly unqualified personnel. too bad TxDOT didn't think doing proper boundary recovery and analysis was required for their needs.
aliquot, post: 415518, member: 2486 wrote: No one said anything about uncriticaly accepting all ROW monuments. Dealing with leaning and missing monuments are basic surveying skills.
I believe that the concensus among a certain fraction of posters was that the right-of-way markers that the road contractor set months or years after the conveyances of the land were original and controlling. Period. If you guys want to back out of that position, I would encourage you.
RADAR, post: 415538, member: 413 wrote: excerpt from TxDOT Manual
Field Work
All fieldwork will be related to the NAD 83 datum through a control network of TxDOT survey points established before the commencement of the boundary survey. Surveys may be performed by GPS techniques, such as real-time kinematic methods in terrain suitable for their employment.Conventional survey methods may be needed in wooded, urban, or mountainous environments, or a mixture of GPS receivers and conventional total stations. Survey techniques shall comply with the procedures specified in Chapter 3, Preliminary Surveying, of this manual. The surveyor will compute state plane coordinates on the Texas Plane Coordinate System for all survey measurements. Surface coordinates will be computed using methods acceptable to TxDOT.
After the preliminary office research is complete, the surveyor will plan the field work based upon the results of the preliminary report. The working sketch will indicate what original corners may be recovered. An original corner that is well known and its use accepted by the local surveying profession is often the most effective beginning point. A careful inspection of the working sketch will frequently reveal the footsteps of the original surveyor that must be retraced for a defensible survey.
The courts have established the duty of the modern boundary surveyor to be the retracement of the footsteps of the original locating surveyor (Vanishing Footsteps of the Original Surveyor, Clayton Orn, Report of the Fifth Texas Surveyors Short Course Conference, 1952). The surveyor shall exert every reasonable effort to recover the corners established by the original surveyors of the grants included in the project area.
The question is not where an entirely accurate survey would locate the lines, but where did the original survey locate such lines (A Treatise on the Law of Surveying and Boundaries, F.E. Clark, 1939). This may require multiple visits to the vicinity to search for the best remaining evidence.
The surveyor will begin by locating or retracing as many corners of the original grants as required to construct the boundaries of the lands included in the project for future takings. Subsequent to locating the original grant boundaries and preparing a boundary construction, the surveyor may locate corners and lines of any junior survey interior to the original grants. In this manner, the surveyor will build up a logical scheme of boundary construction.
LOL! That section of the TexDOT survey manual deals with what are accepted as the standard methods of Texas land surveying but the remarks don't mean what you probably want them to mean, In the case of a highway right-of-way, the "original locating surveyor" was the District Engineer who ran and marked the centerline to which the deeds of conveyance referred, not the road contractor who dropped a precast Type I Concrete Right-of-Way Marker into some augered hole. So retracing the footsteps of the original locating surveyor means reconstructing the centerline that he ran.
The rest of that section deals with how surveys are to be retraced, i.e. by survey on the ground instead of just GIS work in the office from public records. It's funny that TexDOT would think that to be a necessary instruction, but apparently they've had some experiences that indicate that it is.
Dave Karoly, post: 415532, member: 94 wrote: From this thread I can only conclude that Texas has roving bands of hobbyist monument setters.
What is interesting is apparently they perfectly indicate station but not offset so when the roving band set them they used a special auger which could only move left and right but not up station and down station.
LOL! The reconstruction of the Engineer's Centerline is actually a retracement problem that involves some sense of what the errors in transit angles and chained distances were. When the chaining has inaccuracies on the order of 1:3000, there is usually no basis for concluding that a particular station should be 0.10 ft. one way or another along the centerline if the next centerline station is more than 300 ft. distant.
However, it is obviously unreasonable to conclude in that situation that the same District Engineer's staff were unable to measure 40.00 ft. or 50.00 ft. any closer than half a foot or more. So, from the standpoint of retracement, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the markers do not reliably represent the District Engineer's survey any more than a series of fence posts that were supposedly set to replace boundary markers exactly mark some boundary as surveyed.
paden cash, post: 415535, member: 20 wrote: I'm sure the proper thing to do would be to adjust the monument's longitudinal location in Star*Net for a reasonable fit....then refute their transverse distances for deeded values...
Actually, Star*Net can be a good way to reconstruct many Engineer's Centerlines as long as you set the problem up using reasonable rules that follow how the centerline stations were referenced by the right-of-way markers.
flyin solo said
'call TxDOT and talk to them about it, they seemingly have no interest (more likely no budget) to rectify the situation, and clearly have known about it for a lot longer than i have (probably decades). "just lop a few hundred feet out of the tangent and please leave us alone with this" was the gist of the answer. again- you or I or anyone else tries that and good luck at the next board meeting...'
And therein lies the problem. Protect the public, or serve the agency? The survey boards should have two separate sets of rules or agency surveyors should be advocating for the public and standing up against the administrators/ engineers that run the agency! Keep your errors and omissions insurance up to date because it sounds like the private guy is never going to be right on this issue. Jp
here's a typical deed for a conveyance- one i pulled from the map linked above. if anyone can find a reference to a monument, please point it out to me.
View on Scribd... by on Scribd
This image is what we typical find up in this neck of the woods. While i would never call a 3.5" cap on a 6" post out 0.05 feet, some have and the transportation department is perfectly fine with this scenario. The 'king' gets their property per the deed that's that.
I personally fall somewhere in between depending on the nature of the project. Sometimes I hold the deed, sometimes I hold the monuments Either way, i map the entire centerline and row per the plans and deed and go from there. No need to get into specifics regarding what exactly to do in each case as they are too numerous to even begin to cover here. I can say that the older ROW monuments in this area appear to be set by the same group of highly techincal contractors that set monuments in Texas! Some are good, most aren't.
All ÛÒ
In the positions you are advocating, is the R/W fee or easement?
AndÛ? in your opinion, is fee vs. easement relevant to the position you are presenting?
Most original ITD acquisitions are easements even though the deeds read as if they were Fee. This is true up through March 4, 1953. This should make no difference in terms of holding a monument or not.
JKinAK, post: 415588, member: 7219 wrote: All ÛÒ
In the positions you are advocating, is the R/W fee or easement?
AndÛ? in your opinion, is fee vs. easement relevant to the position you are presenting?
I don't think it's relevant. Easements are less often monumented than fee lines, but the legal principles of locating them are mostly the same.
Right, the State gets their R/W per the Deed, an instrument which transfers title to the subject matter. Then steps are taken by government officials to establish the boundaries of their R/W Deed on the ground. Some don't like the precision obtained by their method. The Deed creates the boundary, official actions (in this case) establishes it. I imagine they were establishing many miles of R/W so they sacrificed some precision in favor of speed and lower cost.
Some are overly concerned with logic, the law is not highly concerned with logic, if it were it would be very difficult to have any finality so Judicial resources would constantly be wasted re-litigating issues because a more precisely logical answer can always be found. An easy example is a subdivision lot 50 feet wide with original monuments 51 feet apart, that is just not logical at all, 1 foot should absolutely be shaved off one side or the other. Or check out murder some time, why don't we just hang every killer, that is absolutely logical, why have murder and manslaughter (which is a crime that would otherwise be murder except for mitigating factors)?
Deed interpretation is a question of law which generally applies to the quality of title transferred (fee simple, easement, etc.). Sometimes in old cases the Court was confronted with a question of how to interpret a description which makes a substantial difference in what was transferred, for example, half by area (90 acres) or half by government measure (80 acres), in other words, not strictly a boundary location question.
Location is usually treated as a question of fact and there are exceptions to legal rules which restrict evidence that can be considered. It just would not be possible to survey boundaries in some places without considering extrinsic evidence. The best evidence of a the location of a described boundary corner is the physical monuments left by the original parties to the Deed.
Any boundary which is described remote to the surveyed line (or protracted) is not established until physically monumented. Once the boundary is established then establishing a new boundary, particularly in lieu of one accepted by the State decades ago, is moving the boundary to where it never was located before. Recognizing a monument set and accepted by the official acts of the State is not moving the boundary, it is recognizing the fact of where it has been located in peace for many decades.
with all due respect to that argument dave, that creates a double bind- at least for those of us practicing here under the latest of six (or seven or nine) flags.
because you hold that widely recognized state-sponsored monument at the PC on the east side of the road, and you hold that widely recognized state-sponsored monument at the PC on the west side of the road, even though they fall 98 feet and change apart from each other and guess what? TxDOT is going to come yank a foot and a half from somebody. and it may well end up being just as arbitrary a decision as the original haphazard installation of the obelisk by whomever did it.
aliquot, post: 415592, member: 2486 wrote: I don't think it's relevant. Easements are less often monumented than fee lines, but the legal principles of locating them are mostly the same.
Actually in Oklahoma it can make a big difference, and not in the manner you might think.
If an entity (sovereign, quasi-public entity or even private individual) obtains real property by a deeded conveyance (fee) then that conveyance IS usually subject to all precedent boundary laws that may apply. For example: The State purchases property and the deeded description (or original boundary as located on the ground) is possibly subject to discrepancies due to either poor surveying or deed preparation; the location of the boundary is legally still a matter of fact and subject to those laws that affect the idiosyncrasies of a retraced boundary.
But in the case of an easement stated to be 50' in width; that width is held as paramount with the rights granted. Unless of course that 50' extends beyond the boundary of the original grantor's.
Thankfully very, very few, if any at all, conveyances to the State for highway purposes are written with an unmonumented and ethereal engineer's centerline as a controlling factor. In the case of State highway property specifically; their takes are written as portions of the parent tract and not some willy-nilly hoofrah line that is more often than not subject to a tremendous amount of mathematical dabbling. Construction plans around here may indicate a constant width corridor, but the proof is in the pudding of conveyances. Apparently in Texas property owners have allowed the sovereign to have its cake and eat it too.
Dave Karoly, post: 415593, member: 94 wrote: Location is usually treated as a question of fact and there are exceptions to legal rules which restrict evidence that can be considered. It just would not be possible to survey boundaries in some places without considering extrinsic evidence. The best evidence of a the location of a described boundary corner is the physical monuments left by the original parties to the Deed.
What of course that overlooks is the fact that the Engineer's Centerline to which the deeds typically refer was in fact usually surveyed and marked upon the ground at the time of the conveyance and both parties may be reasonably assumed to have had THAT line in view when the deed was executed, particularly when the deed refers to the line.
The State usually acted diligently to maintain that centerline throughout the construction process and it is also reasonable to think that the right-of-way markers were positioned in relation to it in some way rather than independently surveyed from some remote point. If the centerline were marked by spikes in the highway pavement, there would be no doubt about where the right-of-way is since measurements of 40.00 ft. or 50.00 ft. are considered by Texas courts not to be subject to significant error.
So if the centerline is reconstructed from the best evidence of its location, then the mistake is discovered. The private owner is perfectly free to recover any land he was augered out of by the State's contractor and the State's title is, of course unimpaired by the contractor's mistake since he had no authority to convey the land in which the State has an interest.
Any boundary which is described remote to the surveyed line (or protracted) is not established until physically monumented. .
For such a dogmatic statement, I assume that you can offer at least one case in which a court has held that posts mistakenly placed by an employee of a road contractor hired by the State are binding upon the private owner who suffers the loss of property from the mistake? Likewise, I assume that if the principle is so firmly fixed as you think, there will be cases where the State has been held to have suffered the loss of property from a mistken in the placement of a marker by an employee of a road contractor not authorized as an agent of the State?
So if:
Kent McMillan, post: 415607, member: 3 wrote: the placement of a marker by an employee of a road contractor not authorized as an agent of the State
is exactly where it should be, it still isn't worth the aggregate it was made with?
paden cash, post: 415601, member: 20 wrote: But in the case of an easement stated to be 50' in width; that width is held as paramount with the rights granted. Unless of course that 50' extends beyond the boundary of the original grantor's.
Where the R/W is an easement, the parent parcel is subject to whatever was acquired. The easement is the dominant estate.
If the acquisition was described as a strip, how can the servient estate assert that they don't owe the Public that full strip.
