I'm a biologist using GLO survey field notes to reconstruct tree densities prior to fire suppression in Florida. Frequently, in fact in the majority of corners, the field notes state "no trees convenient for bearings." So my first impression on how to handle it is to assign a greater than or equal to the greatest distance listed for that vegetation type. But this brings up another issue: am I reading the notes correctly? For example, for an 1843 external survey of T22S R37E Henry Washington notes the following for the 1/2 mile post:
Pine S89E 1350 lks 12" dia
" N89E 1530 lks 7" dia
If my arithmetic is correct the distances are 272 and 308 meters, respectively. Do y'all think even in open low vegetation, that Washington would go that far for the nearest trees? The implication here is that pre-fire suppression, in many areas we had pine densities between two and three orders of magnitude lower than at present. I worry that I might be doing something stupid...
Opinions would be appreciated. As an aside, I have developed a deep respect for these guys. I wish I could find out more about Washington and William S. Harris.
Most, if not all of my experience has been in Oklahoma retracing GLO surveys from no earlier than 1870. I've never ran across a bearing tree noted any further than 2 ch. (200 links). It almost makes me think there has been an error in transcribing those notes.
Hopefully someone familiar with Florida notes might chime in.
What part of Florida? I could see that depending upon where you're talking about.
North Merritt Island, Kennedy Space Center.
without looking at the manuscript notes my first intuition would be that it is intending to say 1 chain 53 links, a typical distance for a BT.
- jlw
Really? That's exactly where I grew up.
Knowing what I know about the history of that area, it doesn't surprise me at all. The island was never was, and still isn't, rife with any trees that are gonna stick around very long- or at least stick around in any sort of recognizable shape and size. There may not have been any land between their corner and the next closest trees back then either.
If you're there on site, make sure and drop by the Kings duck in- been there a long time, right down the street from my dad's old shop. I used to mow the grass for them when I was a kid. Most of my buds that never left town have turned into flies there.
Here's the page.
What a coincidence. I'm from Cocoa Beach originally and work at KSC. There are some areas with extremely dense pines but the sense I'm getting is that the area was once much more open and grassy.
How old are you, Tim? My youngest brother went to CBHS. I split before then- when I'd hardly even broken in my custom quiet flight. When my folks moved us there off the farm Ron Jon's was in a closet on the pier.
But yeah- the north end of the island is varied like that. Dad's shop was on n. courtenay couple miles south of the gate- covered in pines, but none of them were very old. But where a bunch of those groves are up off n. tropical were apparently always completely devoid of trees.
I graduated CBHS in 1977. One of the field notes tells of Harris killing four large rattlesnakes just west of where the shuttle landing strip is now. What do you think the odds of ever finding any original monuments are? I might be becoming a bit of a "fanboy" but I think these guys (the honest ones) were pretty amazing.
Given that I've only surveyed in MT and the oldest GLO I have worked on was 1870, I did do re-monumentation project with a BLM Cadastral Tech and we were allowed 300' maximum distance to a new bearing tree.