I think I may have broken a personal record for GLO research in connection with a boundary dispute involving a roughly mile-long boundary in West Texas. Just the cost of copies and maps ordered from the General Land Office so far is right at $900. That's a total of about 600 pages, mainly from the patent files, covering an area about 12 miles by 12 miles, for about a mile of disputed boundary.
The whole area is a sort of Twilight Zone of land boundaries that was originally surveyed, mostly in the 1880's, a classic example of the sort of complexity that the system of metes and bounds land grants typical of Texas has often generated.
Holy moly, Kent!! That is a lot of paper AND a lot of $$ for paper!! Sheesh!! :-O But it sounds as if it is a necessity. 🙂
I sure hope you are able to form a conclusive opinion. There is nothing worse than spending many thousands of dollars in research fees only to tell the client that the research is inconclusive and that they need to come to an agreement with the abutter.
> I sure hope you are able to form a conclusive opinion.
I'm not particularly expecting any problem in that regard. It's just like working a gigantic jig-saw puzzle, figuring out first which lines were actually originally run and which corners made and then building from them. Fortunately, there were a couple of fairly good county surveyors in the late 1800's who left a useful record of their findings.
>That is a lot of paper AND a lot of $$ for paper!!
Well, the good news is that the Texas GLO is scanning all of their patent files and making them available online free for download as a pdf. I still take the free files over to a reprographics place to have color prints made, but the price is about $0.80 per page vs. $2.00 per page for color copies from the actual documents at the GLO.
Sure, I could save some money by having black-and-white copies made, but many of those documents have different colors of inks on them that are important bits of information. So color copies are almost always worth the extra money.
I spent over 1000 at the GLO on a project last month, but it got put on hold and I was told I have to destroy all the research. One interesting thing I found though that a number of people there did not know about were Powells data sheets from the 30's where he recovered many Kuechler and McCombs corners and put together data sheets that look pretty similiar to ones we would get now days from the LCRA or such. The only screwy thing is the coordinate system which is some yard based system that was setup by the military. Unfortunately I received the stop work order before I could really dive into it and start examining the material. Most of my charges were for the large maps and sketches. The files were pretty skimpy.
> I spent over 1000 at the GLO on a project last month, but it got put on hold and I was told I have to destroy all the research.
>[...]
>The only screwy thing is the coordinate system which is some yard based system that was setup by the military.
Yes, as I recall, it is a documented projection that you can find the parameters for and use to convert the grid coordinates to NAD27 latitudes and longitudes and from there to NAD83. Send me your GLO material and I'll "destroy" it for you.
From "Map Projections - a Working Manual" by John P. Snyder, GPO, 1987 (available in full via Google Books):
"The Polyconic projection was also used for the Progressive Military Grid for military mapping of the United States. There were seven zones, A—G, with central meridians every 8° west from long. 73° W. (zone A), each zone having an origin at lat. 40°30' N. on the central meridian with coordinates x = 1,000,000 yards, y = 2,000,000 yards (Deetz and Adams, 1934, p. 87- 90). Some USGS quadrangles of the 1930's and 1940's display tick marks according to this grid in yards, and many quadrangles then prepared by the Army Map Service and sold by the USGS show a complete grid pattern. This grid was incorporated intact into the World Polyconic Grid (WPG) until both were superseded by the Universal Transverse Mercator grid (Mugnier, 1983)."
The "Mugnier" cited is without a doubt Clif Mugnier who posts ... here.
Grid System for Progressive Maps in the U.S.
Actually, here's the publication I think you want to convert the coordinate system used by Powell in his resurvey of the T&P Rwy Co. 80-Mile Reservation West of the Pecos to NAD27 lats and longs:
"Grid System for Progressive Maps in the United States", by William Bowie and Oscar S. Adams, U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey Special Publication No. 59, GPO, Washington, 1919
It's available on Google Books.
Grid System for Progressive Maps in the U.S.
They have a little of this book at the GLO and I copied what they had. I am glad to see it in the public domain though so we can all have access to it.
Grid System for Progressive Maps in the U.S.
> They have a little of this book at the GLO and I copied what they had. I am glad to see it in the public domain though so we can all have access to it.
I think that same map grid appears on the early USGS quad maps, which was probably part of the reason that Powell adopted the projection. I'll have to look at some of the older 15-minute quadrangles in that area to see if the grid coordinate values are in the range that the Progressive Map Grid used.
