Found brass cap – What is it? Where is it?

That is a U.S. Location Monument.

If a Mineral Survey was done before the Township was surveyed then they set one of those and tied the local MSs to it.

Probably a U.S. Location Monument as Dave says.

BUT... I have also seen U.S. LAND Monuments in Alaska (I'm pretty sure that was how they were spelled out). The 1894 Manual talks briefly (pages 221-222) about "Private Land Claims" and how they should be connected to a PLSS Corner "if with two miles" of the Claim. This is the same distance as the Mineral Survey Requirement. I would ASSUME that the USLM (Land) serves the same purpose for a private land claim (or other type of patent application) in remote areas, as the USMM (Mineral) & USLM (Location) does.

I'm not sure when the designation for these monuments changed from U.S. Mineral Monument to U.S. Location Monument, but the 1909 Manual (Survey of the Mineral Lands) was still using “USMM.”

Loyal

As mentioned, it is a USLM in:

Kurt

Photos don't have scale so I thought it is a cap on a rebar but the notes indicate it is much bigger than that.

Rock Mesa, Three Sisters Wilderness

Amazing!!!

Looking at the posts -> A minute to find out it’s a U.S. Location Monument and just over an hour to come up with the plat and notes. It took me much longer to figure it all out last night and I knew the State, County, Township, Range and Section too. The main google result for USLM was US Lime and Minerals, Inc., which didn't seem right.

This monument is in Wickiup Plain in the Three Sisters Wilderness just southwest of the South Sister.

The plain borders a lava flow called Rock Mesa, upon which the claims relating to USLM 983 were staked. It was a fairly politically charged mining claim for a while, with US Pumice Co. using it to challenge their rights from the 1872 mining Act against the 1964 Wilderness act.

In 1961 U.S. Pumice filed 10 claims totaling 1,460 acres for pumice mining on Rock Mesa, which contains a layer of pumice 2 to 20 feet deep.

In 1964 the Wilderness Act was passed which created the Three Sisters Wilderness Area. It outlawed development and motorized travel, but recognized pre-existing mining claims.

The survey related to USLM 983 was conducted in 1973 and in 1974 US Pumice announced it intended to begin mining. Everyone lawyered up and sent nasty letters back and forth.

In 1977 the Feds appraised the claims and concluded that it would not be profitable due to extraction/hauling costs and a lack of minerals. US Pumice didn’t agree. Everyone lawyered up and sent nasty letters back and forth. In 1982 the POTUS signed a bill that authorized the feds to buy US pumice’s claims for 2 million dollars. For the last 29 years the mesa has been under the political radar, under the stars, under the snows of winter and the baking sun of summer. One of my favorites places since a hot August day in 1975 when I first trudged by it, ignorant of the political maelstrom that was swirling around it.

Yesterday's walk -

Entering Wickiup Plain from the south. the big mountain is the South Sister . LeConte Crater on the left:

South Sister from the saddle by LeConte Crater:

USLM 983 is right of my pack, just above my Garmin. That jumble of rock cliffs is Rock Mesa proper. Broken Top Mtn. is over to the right:

Maureen and the dog hoofin' across Wickiup Plain:

A cool down at Devil's lake:

This (the 2nd photo below) pi$$e$ me off to no end and I break this law whenever I can, although we were legal this time...

Rock Mesa, Three Sisters Wilderness

MEMORIES!!!!!

MIke,

While you were hiking around them mountins, did you by any chance find the remnants of an old geezer lying near a trail, trying his darndest to die of hypothermia, while denying that he was freezing to death as he took off his jacket to lay down for a while? Stupid Iwans!!

rotflmho!!

geezer

Rock Mesa, Three Sisters Wilderness

Used to live in Oregon. Went to OIT in fact. I have hiked a bunch of times where you took those pics. Didn't realize the politics involved there. Thanks for the post. Miss the Cascades.

Rock Mesa, Three Sisters Wilderness

No, Geezer, no remains were to be found of a pneumonia stricken, hypothermic, second-degree sunburned surveyor just off the prairie schooner from Iowa. You didn’t miss much at the campout on the top. As you can see from this photo of Bob Butler and Andy Reiter, it was all we could do to hang on lest the hurricane winds whisked us off the top and into the valleys 4000 ft. below:

I’ve got a couple other photos somewhere of the trip I’ll try to dig up. How much will you pay for me to NOT post them here????

Rock Mesa, Three Sisters Wilderness

Post 'em Post 'em man...

Rock Mesa, Three Sisters Wilderness

MAYBE I SHOULDN'T HAVE ASKED, AFTERALL.

RONFLMHO

GEEZER

Rock Mesa, Three Sisters Wilderness

Mike, Great Pict. I used to work for Andy. Great guy!

This is an image of the survey record for this Brass Cap. My father Tom Kerr and another guy named Bruce Crocket set the cap. Great stories of all the heavy equipment they needed to haul into this area for this survey. No 4-runners or horses to help with the job. My Dad is a retired surveyor out of McCall, Idaho and he worked with and for Bill Harris for many years.

Mr. _____ Kerr Jr.

Welcome to the board, and thanks for posting the notes.;-)

PS. I guess I assumed MR..... Sorry if it's the contrary.

survey998 – Thanks for posting the notes. I find this just as astonishing as Kurt Luebke in Montana posting the original survey a mere hour after I’d put the first photo up. Now the son of the surveyor who set this remote, obscure monument posted the original notes!

A company I had worked for actually did some mapping from this point, but I missed out on that job. In the summer of 1978 George Cook Engineering was hired by US Pumice to do some mapping on these claims. I’d already left Cook to accept a survey job in Baker, OR., but when I got back a year or so later the Cook boys had lots of stories too. I think they had an easier go of it than your dad ‘cause they packed in on horses and used a K&E Vectron. I’ll see if Dave or Don have any pictures of that job lying around.

Next time we hike up there I’ll find the witness rebars. Maureen will love that “… I hike miles into to the wilderness with my hubby and the big freak goes right back to that survey thing we saw last year, pulls out a pocket tape, hand compass and a garden trowel and starts digging up old rebar and then takes pictures of them…”

Here’s another closeup for Tom Kerr. All his labor building a rock mound was for naught, it’s been carried away piecemeal.

Thanks for the photo Mike. I am actually the daughter of a surveyor.
I will share the photo with my Dad. He really enjoyed reading all of the posts about the cap. Most of the work they did back then was by brute force. He estimated that they had to carry between 120 and 130 pounds of equipment for this job.

I have to laugh at your wife's reaction to your excitement. As the daughter of an engineer/surveyor, I thought that everyone grew up watching slide shows of paint test colors in mines.

Ms. Survey998, I’m glad your dad liked the photos and I can well imagine that was one tough job traversing around and through the lava beds, which are like a boiling twisted hell suddenly flash-frozen. Its cool that you used your dad’s Idaho LS number as part of your login name!