Dang.
I was hoping this would go unnoticed. For what it's worth, the reporter did a good job all in all of taking such an obscure, complicated and technical subject and reporting it fairly accurately. Pretty fun to ride around for 3 hours with someone who HAS to hear you talk about surveying. Poor ba$tard.
Here is a previous post about this project: https://surveyorconnect.com/threads/scorched-earth-forest-fire-aftermath.268782/#post-268782
That is a great story and well written. You obviously impressed the heck out of the reporter. Normally, they just slop together a few snippets of worthwhile data with a bunch of nonsensical prose to fill out the number of words they are supposed to generate each day. So kudos to this reporter....and his source of factual data.
There a few things in the photo that are disturbing, however. First, we all know that county employees only have experience with leaning on shovels, not using them. The compromise in this photo is that a shovel is being used, but in an upside down orientation. Second, we all know surveyors don't actually get down on their knees. Well, they might. But only at home when negotiating with the spouse over something very, very important. Third, the caption suggests the sidekick is magically obtaining the shiny new GPS coordinates of the corner monument despite, quite obviously, being set up quite some distance from said corner monument. That really is AMAZING (to quote our idiot high school principal describing virtually anything imaginable). Fourth, and quite seriously, how far out did you have to go to find four usable bearing trees that would not be removed by the clean up work?
"Land surveying still requires four bearing trees to be recorded when setting a new corner marker, according to Berry." This quote got me to thinking about most places I work and the fact that finding four usable bearing trees would normally involve distances far longer than a 100-foot tape. Different strokes for different folks in radically different circumstances.
It looks like that fire and subsequent clearing may have caused havoc to the corner monument, plus that the BTs were destroyed.
I see the stone alongside the monument. How was it damaged from the fire?
Second picture in the slide show looks like a RTK shot? Good enough for "county " work? (just a joke)
Good article and good work!
bearing trees?
they look awful skimpy out there now
we almost never have one in the notes it's all pits and piles here, looks like there are lots of stones to make a nice mound
"GPS has just changed everything".... Did you have to say that out loud?
Nice story Mike!
I did some similar work after a fire 3 years ago. The fire did a good job of clearing the ground but it also exploded a few stones and cracked a couple. There where some I really thought I should of found but never did.
I had to put a lot of pressure on the county to get it done. The commissioners just didn't see the need and didn't want to spend the money. The county surveyors office was suspended in 1957 for lack of funds. Its been so long that they just don't see the need or reason for maintaining the PLSS. I might make them think they maybe should do it but as soon as dollars get in the mix it's totally off the table.
I still think they are sore at me for threatening to get an injunction to stop the dozer chaining after the fire if they didn't do something to protect the corners.
Q & A
ÛÏthe caption suggests the sidekick is magically obtaining the shiny new GPS coordinates of the corner monument despite, quite obviously, being set up quite some distance from said corner monumentÛ
Yeah, Brad is firing up the rover at that point, but the paper didnÛªt have me proof the photo captions before publication so he is forever tying the wrong spot in newspaper archives through the centuries.
ÛÏ how far out did you have to go to find four usable bearing trees that would not be removed by the clean up workÛ
We are setting iron as references for most of these, what with all the trees being gone. Better than the GLO did. They had ZERO bearing trees at Lieutenant Corners and only occasionally 1 bearing tree at Full Bird Corners. In the notes below the red underline is this corner and the blues are others on this page
ÛÏI see the stone alongside the monument. How was it damaged from the fire?Û
It wasnÛªt. Again, not being able to proof the reporterÛªs content made for a layman faux pas on his part. But thatÛªs OK. We are perpetuating the locations of found stones with durable steel monuments. I said that, but it didnÛªt register as a comprehensive sentence in his mind.
ÛÏSecond picture in the slide show looks like a RTK shot?Û
You bet! The 5th Bearing Tree if you will. We shot all the corners, pre logging, with two 10 minute RTK shots with different SV constellations to perpetuate the corner locations during logging. The mark we made on this one in June 2014 was 0.02Ûª off when we staked out to it last week. The others we inventoried after logging were from 0.03Ûª to 0.07Ûª off. We use the ODOT RTN network and our county wide LDP coordinate system. Down in Travis County Texas someone just felt a sharp abdominal pain and then dropped a deuce in their wranglers after I typed those last 13 words.
ÛÏ"GPS has just changed everything".... Did you have to say that out loud?Û
Ha! But seriously, this was some high tech work. We were able to download the fire perimeter from geomac.com and then import BLM GCDB points to use for handheld Garmin searching. Once we found a few corners and GPSd them with the rovers we could do a stakeout to line routine to get midway between two found section corners to narrow down the search. Which is how we found this one, after the initial Garmin search in a football field of 21x13x5 stones.
HereÛªs the å? in situ -
compare the background with this:
I remember you posting about that Leon. Good on you to take that thankless work on. Our area had been logged in 1917 and then clear cut in the early 40s, so with no bearing trees marked by the GLO and cats and skidders ripping it up during the various harvests, I think we were lucky to find what we did.
Nice article Mike and great job!
