> There is one guarentee when you do use it. You didn't set the corner where it was originally.
I would respectfully disagree. I had a survey some years ago in a platted subdivision that was about a decade old at the time. corner lot and the corners fell in the centerline of the road and were called for nails on subdivision map. Pavement was old enough they should have been in, but we could not find them. Found back corner and two irons (one on each sideline) that were reference points. Lines were short and I calculated the chord from iron to iron and it was short. I prorated the corners in to stake them out to find/ set them. Of 6 or 7 nails along the frontage of the two roads, I found all but one of them with my stakeout WHERE I HAD THEM CALCULATED. All of my calc's were within 1-2 hundredths of where the actual nail was found. Put an iron finder on the nails and nothing, no signal. I set my last one on calc and I would say the odds were pretty stinking good that it was where the original corner would have been set. (there was a patched hole in the asphalt where the nail would have been, that is what got it I think).
Dave
That's not saying a lot. What did you like about it? The font? Possibly the Kerning?
What the Lucas article points out, which is the elephant in the room nobody likes to acknowledge, is the colossal failure of the PLSS sectionalized land system to provide stable boundaries. As a system to transfer the title to the private landowners without gaps and overlaps the system accomplished this goal at least on paper and at a low cost. Yes the land was patented without the problems that had existed before, the land went private. The giant land speculation of the new country was accomplished with amazing speed and success.
The failure is the use of protraction and transfer of title without having all the corners marked on the ground and described (or referenced) in the patent. The land was only partially surveyed, boundaries not fully established, a huge problem that exists to this very day. The use of aliquot parts is supposed to eliminate the gaps and overlaps which in theory it does on paper, its just the the corners are not established on the ground. Yeah you own the property and have a good title, you just don't know where it is, where the boundary is exactly on the ground.
From history it appears that this problem is difficult to resolve, everyone including many surveyors just make it worse on a daily basis. Every survey requires a breakdown of the section, a further correction of past errors and defects in measurements, fine tuning of all the aliquot lines, then after that as various corners get declared lost and a corner or corners proportioned anew all the boundaries in the section are relocated, its a continual moving target (so much for stability).
The courts have dealt with the problem many times with such things as repose and landowner agreement (establishment boundary law, it isn't perfect but it is what it is) but its a little dicey and many surveyors just flat out refuse to recognize and apply what the appellate courts have given us. So if you own sectional land and you hire a surveyor your boundary lines are probably going to move, not only from where you believe they are and where the last or next surveyor staked then out.
The second colossal failure in this whole situation is that many surveyors can't see the elephant in the room, the just plain gigantic cluster this is and ridiculous situation surveyors have put themselves in the eyes of the public. Instead of a solver of the problem the surveyor has just become the problem needed to be avoided like the plague.
The whole PLSS, at least in some ares where it has been let die on the vine, needs to be put to sleep, killed and the boundaries marked with monuments that are decreed by the courts as the boundary markers which would be stable. Aliquot (protracted) subdivision, platting and description of land should just be outlawed and the past use of it wiped clean. The proof just lays before us blatantly on the landscape. The other option is landowner agreements to establish boundaries where the court needs not be involved. Once this was done retractment would actually be possible instead of fictional independent resurveys packaged and sold as some form of magical retracement. (I retraced your boundaries by making them up from my box of magic tricks, real evidence not required, so much for what you landowners have done and respected all these years).
The very foundation of our landownership systems needs to be rebuilt with something that works and is stable. The old foundation is crumbling, not stable and built on a system that appears good in theory but just hasn't worked in reality. What the landowner and society needs and wants is just not being provided very well by the land survey industry. So if we wake up some day and find ourselves cast to the curb it shouldn't be any great unexpected surprise.
Like so many other problems in the US these days, solutions just can't be found on the landscape. Sad!
Leon R. Day, PLS, PE, Utah
> The whole PLSS, at least in some ares where it has been let die on the vine, needs to be put to sleep, killed and the boundaries marked with monuments that are decreed by the courts as the boundary markers which would be stable. Aliquot (protracted) subdivision, platting and description of land should just be outlawed and the past use of it wiped clean.
So what I hear you saying is that we need to embark on a grand resurvey of the American cadastre. Not that the PLSS needs to be scrapped , but that it's realization is deteriorating.
LR,
I have an opinion vastly different from yours. I believe the PLSS is one of the finest things ever done in America. I really can't see how it could have been done any better (except for the relatively small amount of fraudulent GLO work). The problems that you describe come not from the PLSS, but from surveyors' interpretations of the PLSS that are not consistent. It is not the PLSS that is the failure--it is the misuse of it.
But for sake of conversation, let's say that the PLSS was going to be initiated today and done with modern instruments to a standard of 1:20,000 precision. That would mean that a 0.5 foot error might creep in into a section. And then when someone comes in an has to deal with the error for the fine boundary in a new town where a skyscraper is going to be built right next to the line, the 0.5 ft., or maybe 0.1 ft. error might come into play. How would it be resolved? The scenario would be very similar if the erorr were 1:5000 allowable (thus larger). The solution would be the same. And probably the same if it were 1:1000, and then pretty soon we get down to GLO precision. Where is the breakpoint or turning point in the surveying logic that would result in a different technique. I sure can't identify one. I believe that land surveying procedures, all pretty similar, would be needed to survey the land. There is really no mathematical solution to resolve all of our lands in the PLSS. Prescription, common acceptance, surveying professionals, etc. make all of this work. I have thought about the same scenario you mention for literally thousands of hours over my career, and I am convinced that what we have with PLSS is really very very very good.
Not long after I got my license, I think a little over 30 years ago, I was asked to survey an acre that had a POB called as the center of a section. I recalled my LS Law Exam where I interpreted (correctly on exam) that the center of the section would be done by surveying across from opposing quarter corners. I did so. I set a new iron rod that was, as I recall, about 9 feet from a 1/2" iron rod set by an older surveyor about 14 years prior, and he had surveyed about 6 parcels tied to it. Later I went back to that point to survey another tract, and I looked at all of this and determined that my 1/2" iron rod that I had set as a new surveyor, was NOT RIGHT. I used the older surveyor's center of the section, and have been back into that section about 20 times since then. My old WRONG corner is still there with the old acre I surveyed. I have over the years watched this evolve.
Assume that using my GPS I surveyed the quarter corners again and established the theoretical center of the section again. I am positive it would not match my original center of section I set 30 years ago. Let's say I miss it by 1 foot. Which one would I use? And the guy who comes behind me and misses me by 5 inches. What does he do? If what I understand you propose is correct, the problem with the 5 inches would be idential to my 1 foot and identical to the 9 feet. The solution is to use the first old, reliable corner for the center of the section and go from there. I can't see it any other way. And as Robert Hill posted earlier, the proration was a good way to find the approximate corner set by the first surveyor (although I don't thing I'd have had to prorate to find it).
So I what I am saying is that the PLSS is a wonderful thing, but it takes a good understanding of PLSS surveying to make it work. And it takes the willingness to accept others' corners when they are reasonable. The whole thing a jigsaw that requires professional judgment, proper interpretation of accepted procedures, common report, cooperation, common sense, etc., and with prescription and acquiesence working in the background to help. I like to view all of this stuff as this: The only accurate map is the full-sized map drawn out there on the ground. All of this stuff we measure and put on paper is nothing more than our attempts to represent what exists on the ground; that is what the natural heirarchy means to me. When someone cuts a section into four parts, I am going to use his center of section; I am not going to remeasure the section and try to show him wrong. The only reason i would remeasure the section would to be to gain confidence that his point is not grossly wrong. That approach resolves the issues you speak of about the failures of the PLSS.
I don't think a grand resurvey is required, What we have now is a constant resurvey of sections with constant tweaking and relocation based upon 8 corners of a section that are moving around. Your parcel shouldn't be based upon some marker not even on your boundary but some long distance away. So we get all these arguments about whether the new markers are precisely on the senior line, never being able to actually locate the legal center of section, parcels created without any marked corners, just some aliquot part of a larger parcel which itself can't always be located per the original survey.
A parcel should have all its own corners physically marked on the ground and those local boundary corners should control. They should be tied out to the nearest neighbors or other permanent things nearby so that the corner can be replaced when necessary without resorting to something like a section breakdown of a section with uncertain corners. There should be just one marker at each corner for a landowner and his neighbors (no gaps or overlaps).
What should be held is the original established corners if they exist. After that follow the law and accept what the landowners have accepted or established. Use the courts or agreement to get into the record the description of the parcels based upon established physical corner markers. Establish what is not established by agreement or court oversight. After that you own what is marked upon the ground based upon a description of the corner makers of the parcel. You'd no longer own some aliquot part of a section subject to constant resurvey and intersected line corners.
It should be this way now, but folks just have a hard time accepting what was not done to their present day requirements in the past. The PLSS aliquot part system just keeps it going for ever, never can the created corners (points) from a conveyance that were not marked be marked and accepted. This is argued all the time to the ridicules. When a corner is created before the monument and the monument is not part of the description it will always be contested by someone, thus no stability.
We should accept what has been accepted, mark and describe it, remove the subjection to some aliquot part corners a long ways distance and stabilize boundaries. The use of protraction to (not) locate boundaries just convey them was just a huge colossal mistake, a dog chasing his tail forever (but it saved a lot of money). It should be and could be ended. Surveyors should lead the way.
As a land owner I shouldn't need to worry about some center of section or section corner located outside my land. All I want to know is the limits of what I own and control. Some idiot with a bulldozer and a surveyor a half mile distant shouldn't have any affect on my boundaries.
Leon R. Day, PLS, PE, Utah
LR, see my post below. Internal corners of section should not be moving around based upon what someone does to re-survey or re-establish some external section corner or quarter corner. Not at all.
Frank,
Your approach mostly resolves the issues and I agree.
Problem is your approach is just blown off by too many surveyors.
No the PLSS system is not the problem per say, the problem began when the GLO patented the land to the private land owners using a protraction system. The landowners and their local government just didn't do what was contemplated and it continues today. Now so many think it should be fixed back the the original plan. Well that ain't gonna happen and it shouldn't in a lot of situations.
But I think we could have stable boundaries for the most part, but everyone needs to get on the same page (hows that for an impossibility in the land survey industry). It might take some sort of legislation to beef up the old foundation to acceptable current expectations of landowners and society.
Leon R. Day, PLS, PE, Utah
LR,
I guess that is where a lot of the rift is coming from on BLM issues that have been so bitter. Those discussions seem to remain bitter even when they agree!
Read and re-read the section of the manuals, (both 1973 & 2009), so that you can understand the process of correcting the record description so that it matches the physical boundary. It is known as tract segregation and can be used for either dependent or independent resurveys. The process converts the aliquot part description to a M&B with tract number designator which is shown on the plat of resurvey and the tract number designator is then used in the same way as a lot number is used on a deed.
This process is used by the private surveyor in compliance with applicable state statutes that define the process used for correcting record defects in your particular state.
Richard Schaut
