Second job in as many weeks where I've come across monuments just laying on the ground horizontal. No sign of disturbance. Back in the woods, just laying there like someone planned on coming back to set them but on there way back they got run over by a bus or something.
Today's was kind of humorous. Old subdivision done back in 1974. Half dozen 1/2" rebar in a row, in the fully reclined position. Not bent, just laying there with about forty years accumulation of duff over them. Left me scratching my head on which end to shoot. Did find a couple that were actually set, errr, sort of, but they seemed kind of loose so I gave them a tug and turned out they were only about 10" long. Looked like the crew?ÿran short of irons and didn't want to make a return trip to the truck so they just hacked their 30"ers into 3 10"ers to stretch'em out.
Oh Happy, happy, Joy, joy.
Any chance that freeze/thaw worked it's magic on them??ÿ
Nah. The first was an aluminum primary and the flanges hadn't been turned outward to secure it in the ground and no obvious disturbance to ground and today's vertical finds were 10" and the 'sleepers' were all 30". Ground wasn't wet which is typically a condition of jacking.?ÿ
Way up on a remote high ridge in a little saddle one of the guys came upon a 1914 GLO brass cap that was in the notes as set. It was lying loose on the ground, flanged, in perfect shape except the side lying in the dirt was discolored. There is little doubt that it was carried up with the intention of being set and never was.
Here's my how lazy can you be when setting final monuments story.?ÿ
Tasked with?ÿ recovering the R/W for a 1970s Interstate highway highway bridge at a major river over a deep narrow canyon. The approach monumentation was tight, of record and fine quality, buried BLM style flared pipes with a stamped brass cap.?ÿ Right at the canyon rims the R/W became kinda complicated and to set the monuments further there would have been a few dozen either in the river or set on steep cliff faces.?ÿ Sent my most adventurous?ÿ party member down the cliffs so I could optically observe anything found from the other side.?ÿ It turned out he found several pallets of BLM style pipes, unmarked, still banded to the pallets for the most part, just over the cliff as far as you could throw such things.
Contacted the regional DOT survey supervisor and he said yea, the monumentation maps show everything set per the R/W Map, but really, who cares about where the line is once you're in thin air over a chasm??ÿ Suggested I chill and realize ownership is effectively bounded by the top of the cliffs, just show all the approach monumentation and declare the others not found. Do a least squares adjustment for the missing monuments and they'll fall within 1/2' of the bridge's actual location.?ÿ Easy-peasey!
I took his advice to heart.
My first job as a surveyor on a government crew was to search for and reference recently set boundary monuments that had been set by a contractor around a lake (government owned). Large lake, hundreds of corners. We were finding them all pretty easily, until we got to one area that was along a steep hillside. Couldn't find any. Then we found about 10 monuments all together (dig-in type), thrown over the hill. Seems they didn't want to work on that steep hill, figured nobody would know, and they just tossed them over the hill.?ÿ
