These 60d spikes are apparently intended to be references to a section corner, which was found about 50 feet away. Unfortunately neither is shown on any recorded CCR. The road to heck is paved with good intentions.
I have wondered frequently why the second surveyor feels he cannot use the reference nail left by the first surveyor. Especially when they are so readily apparent.
Is that a utility pole or a fence post?
> Is that a utility pole or a fence post?
Utility pole. But many fence posts around here are recycled utility poles.
Don't bother getting started about putting nails in utility poles. Every pole in Oklahoma within 100 feet of a PLSS corner has at least one.
Oklahoma "Protocol"
Prior to the abolishment of the elected office of County Surveyor is was common...no, standard procedure, for the County Surveyor to keep his references under lock and key. If you needed a corner, you paid the County Surveyor to send his crew out there and set a nail from their super-secret-notes.
Unfiled references at corners are really nothing new. You should have been around in 1978 when we adopted the "Corner Perpetuation Act" and listened to all the bitchnpissnmoaning that went on by these gentlemen that possessed the records and made their living doing nothing but resetting corners for others. Making them public was almost considered blasphemous!
Sadly, I think that practice still manifests occasionally.
Oklahoma "Protocol"
Early in my career I approached another survey company for some help with a job in their backyard. Their only solution was for me to subcontract the entire job to them. They would not even begin to discuss any information that they might have had readily available.
Let's just say that things went downhill from there.
Don't bother getting started about putting nails in utility poles
OMG!!!!
That's SOP in Oklahoma????
Not only are you doing an illegal act but then you make a public record of it!!
Why do such a horrible thing anyway?
There is such a thing as common decency:-(
Generally these are placed a foot to a foot and a half above ground level. No lineman is going to slide down the pole and get hung up on one. I can show you thousands of examples.
The two downsides are when the poles get replaced and when a pole gets "adjusted" and the nail is now on the back side or at least a different position than when the nail was set.
Unfortunately, I have witnessed the situation of multiple reference nails in the same pole, post, tree, whatever far too many times in my career.
If I came on that one in the photo, I'd remove it, who cares about the swing tie at that point!!
Totally disgusting thing to do!!!
Probably a $50 a day fine or something, Imagine if it's been there 10 years and you can track it back to a surveyor for 3000 days.
Utility poles only have a short lifetime anyway, so why use them?
Oklahoma "Protocol"
Random acts of non-professionalism...They are everywhere..:-(
Pablo B-)
30 to 50 years is not temporary
I've used references set in power poles reliably that have been there for 30 to 50 years. This is especially true in towns with their own power plants. A major power pole replacement project was completed in my area recently that took out poles that had been in place since the 1960's.
30 to 50 years is not temporary
30 to 50 years is temporary in the surveying world and that is the upper limit of pole life, if you get permission from the utility company OK, but use their approved fixtures, they do have them.
What is shown in that picture is just disgusting; have a lineman tear his leg on that and have the corner record lead to a surveyor and see what his liability really is.
Almost everything is temporary
Even our major river bridges are getting replaced about once every 40 years now. A really new, huge fence corner post may be around for 100 years or 10 years depending on the future situation. Road culverts get replaced. Trees get cut down. We don't have rock bluffs to chisel marks into. Or mammoth boulders, either.
What we tend to have near almost every section corner and quarter corner are corner posts and power poles. The corner posts tend to be nearly straight across from the monument dictating a minimum of one other reference tie that will be around for some period of time. Most of the time, that turns out to be a power pole or two. Since it really helps to use things that are easily identified when first pulling up to the site, posts and poles are our most common significant items. Trees may be used, when we have some nearby, but no one likes nails in trees, either.
Some have started stabbing iron bars in the ground at weird points and using those for reference ties. The problem with that is that they don't stand out and are highly likely to be torn out unless placed directly below fence wire. That makes it a thousand times tougher to find them. Because there isn't just the wire you can see but remnants of the last five fences that were there once upon a time.
Over 90 percent of the section corners around here are somewhere in the middle of a road. Most properties are fenced to either keep cows in or keep cows out. Most of the roads have power lines running along them. Once in awhile a cross-road culvert or entry culvert is near a corner. Other than that the two most common and visible potential reference objects are fence posts and power poles. This practice of using them for reference nails is so common that every lineman knows to be on the lookout. I have never heard of an incident involving a reference nail. I'm not saying it couldn't happen. It's just that out the hundreds of thousands of opportunities for something to happen, nothing has ever been reported generally.
Almost everything is temporary
I hear ya; I do what the BLM does in roads and set R.M.'s, they seem to last as long as anything, at least until the next upgrading project, but the utility pole thing is a special case. Working with those guys will open your eyes to the issue. And if one of them sees what's on that pole in the picture he will jerk it out anyway, and he's not going to be very happy!!
