Well, according to the statute, you should show them all as they are; spirals. This should also make for happy engineers:)
Well THAT should be "fun!"
I'm okay with that (I guess), so long as Searles Spirals are used (and everything is tangent).
?
My experience with 19th and early 20th century course and distance descriptions is that they don't necessarily precisely describe the route as actually used. ?ÿThe purpose was to run a meandering survey as quickly as possible and to run courses as far as possible. They didn't bother with describing curves but the road had to curve because the team and wagon will naturally follow a curve. I think the purpose of the courses and distances is to point out the road which is subject to the R/W. The described R/W follows the road as constructed, it's not a prescriptive road. ?ÿI've seen this in Ridge meanders too, the survey ran out a 500' course but the ridge has a lot more angle points than what the description indicates, they just didn't describe it in 10 to 20' lengths, they had more common sense than that.
My experience with 19th and early 20th century course and distance descriptions is that they don't necessarily precisely describe the route as actually used. ?ÿThe purpose was to run a meandering survey as quickly as possible and to run courses as far as possible. They didn't bother with describing curves but the road had to curve because the team and wagon will naturally follow a curve. I think the purpose of the courses and distances is to point out the road which is subject to the R/W. The described R/W follows the road as constructed, it's not a prescriptive road. ?ÿI've seen this in Ridge meanders too, the survey ran out a 500' course but the ridge has a lot more angle points than what the description indicates, they just didn't describe it in 10 to 20' lengths, they had more common sense than that.
You're right on Karoly!
We see this all the time on "official" County Line and County Road SURVEYS (PLATS) around various parts of Utah.
Most of the County Road Surveys (19th Century) are Compass and chain/tape, with little (or no) corrections for local magnetic variation OR slope-horizontal. On the UP-side, the County Road Surveys "usually" have beautiful Stones at the angle points.
The County Line Surveys (at least those "along" ridges), are well done, BUT obviously DON'T make any attempt to follow every wiggle in the boundary (that would take a monument every 5 or 10 feet in some cases).
Loyal
?ÿ
My experience... they had more common sense than that.
This is a little off the subject, but then again maybe it isn't.
On the Minnesota Iron Range in the 1950s, there was an old county highway engineer who either didn't like math or didn't know much of it. I didn't work with him, but heard this story from people who did.
A common task in those days was creating a better alignment, with uniform curves, for irregular dirt and gravel roads when rebuilding them. Old "Johnson" would send a crew out to survey the existing centerline, and he'd plot it up to scale. Then he would pull open a drawer in which he kept an assortment of jar lids. The radius of a new curve was determined by which jar lid best fit the old alignment. Sometimes he'd use a round ashtray if he couldn't find a jar lid that suited him.
Of course Johnson didn't know what the new radius was, and furthermore he didn't care. Instead he'd plot the tangent lines, scale offsets from them to the jar-lid curve, and give that data to the crew for use in staking the new centerline.
Of the dozens of old roads I've surveyed as county surveyor - two immediately come to mind because they were litigated, so I had years of time to research:
- In 1918, an existing wagon road was petitioned to be made into a county road, and I retraced the field book where a crew with transit and tape measured "PI TO PI" (and, it melts your heart to see how well they did) - but, to make a contemporary, stamped survey, it is obvious that the 7-mile road winding through mountainous terrain had virtually NO straight lines, so I showed the road as it exists, with many non-tangent curves, and certified that it is the same road surveyed in 1918. As it turns out, the stakeholders settled for a 50' easement, and I wrote accurate legal descriptions with curves, and it was a GOOD THING to have surveyed the curves as they exist. (not only did the county get sued, but I got sued personally over making the claim that a 1918 book showing a survey of a "county road" by the county surveyor, accompanied by a petition, could actually BE a county road).
For another lawsuit, I surveyed 10 miles of a winding road, now a 16' gravel road, which is undisputedly a 2 tract wagon road in the beginning. There is no deed or record of any kind for this road, but it is county maintained and plowed. In 1910, the county commissioners declared in a public meeting that they consider ALL of their county roads to be at least 60' rights of ways (unless specifically recorded otherwise). Over the years, it was merely understood that to plow a road in the winter requires 60'. My survey showed the roadway as exists, with curves, and a prominent label stating that the 60' right of way is "Assumed", with "no record data". Again, both my county and I personally got sued for making such a wild, reckless claim. One landowner reported me to the State Board for this honey. 20 years after I first set foot on this project, the courts - yes, the courts - ruled that it was a 60' right of way and ordered me to monument each side, so, I'm pretty convinced that unless otherwise recorded, follow the curves - and explain that with transit and chain, the intent was to also approximate the curves as they exist.?ÿ
Locally there were a several or maybe half dozen or so surveyors that did not deal with curve data.
They would measure along the centerline of a highway and collect the postition at 100ft chord locations and offset that to the r/w.
In their metes and bounds would be the resulting calls given in chords for the curved sections of a boundary, less than 100ft for the inside and more than 100ft for the outside, and on a rare occasion the r/w would be in 100ft chords as measured along the existing fence.
When the TS became available, they still kept with the chord descriptions.
One would call me several times a week during the mid 1980s and ask for me to remind him how to get his HP41 back into program mode.
Every monument for these guys was an "iron pin", that covered most anything made of steel from 30d nail to 3in pipe. One iron pin turned out to be a 12in section of rusted out muffler pipe.
At least they would call a RR Spike, an Axle and a Rail End what they actually were.
0.02
Depends on how you survey it. The County can easily declare 60' to be the legal ROW, but absent proof that 60' was legally acquired, can it really exist? Here in PA it is possible to show ownership to the centerline, or a line somewhere within the paved traveled way, an existing record 33' ROW and a legal ROW of 50', 60' or even 66'. Does no make the municipality the owner, possibly only that the municipality is responsible to maintain what is there. That may be from EP to EP, curb to curb, or include the roadside swale. Typically slope easements were required for construction of the road, but after consruction the municipalities did not claim?ÿownership of the slope. In limited access right of ways the taking was including the slope areas and it was that limit that was fenced to show limited access.
Paul in PA
Besides a prescriptive easement, there is implied dedication too.
I think Warren describes a Court treating width as a question of fact, it can be presumed that the County used the full 60?? width in the winter because the Governing Board declared it was necessary. A pre-existing written instrument would be superior evidence of width.
here are some interesting concepts that have been considered by the courts, and by the stakeholders - the public and the private landowners:
- Prescriptive use started out as a 6' wide wagon trail. Over time, small cars got bigger and wider, and today, the typical road is a 16 to 20' gravel, graded roadway, with bar ditches, cuts, and fills.?ÿ
- The private landowners believe the public is stealing their land, but they are merely using it as a safe passageway, the same use as in the beginning - the public has done nothing more than what has been allowed as a reasonable use.?ÿ
- Land during the homestead years was worthless unless the public could get to it - a horse path or wagon road - turned "county road" made the land much more valuable because there was an official "caretaker" (the county) that would maintain the road and keep it open so that ALL the land could be settled and developed. In the beginning, a few homesteaders would get together on a petition and BEG the county to convert their little path into a "county road".?ÿ
the heirs of those homesteaders became wary of "trespassers" - they take the decades of ownership by the public for granted, and now, today, they see all "county roads" as endless strip malls, ruining THEIR property views!?ÿ
One landowner closed off the first pioneer trail over the continental divide, an old wagon road which evolved into a hiking trail, and eventually a biking trail - it was a wonderful trail and had reasonable recorded rights - but, as development expanded over the decades, private ownership found its way into what was once very distant "wilderness", and these landowners go to court to fight the "encroachment" of hikers through their property. Literally, it's the other way around - and hikers lose their long beloved hidden trails to new development and locked gates.?ÿ
Its all perspective - roads are necessary to get to the developments - but that's where they install locked gates and take hikers to court who infringe on their views! Of course when I show the courts and their lawyers an old county surveyor's field book and a survey dated 1918, along with a road petition by a few landowners of the time - they laugh and think how stupid anyone could be for thinking that THAT's all it takes to constitute a county road! what an idiot!
the other funny thing is that we have plowing about 6 months per year - plows used to be about 6' wide, now they are about 18' wide. so, we have had to prove in court - they always sue over this - that it takes about 60 feet to have enough room to store snow on the side - but that won't work in the warmer climates.?ÿ
I have learned a lot by watching a few people spend years, and many many thousands of dollars going to court, trying to prove that their road is actually a 6' wide wagon road, when it not only isn't, but it was their very family who begged the county to turn that wagon road by petition into a "county road".?ÿ
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