Here in the colonial state of Kentucky, doing a mix of urban to rural surveys, I believe my average of finding property corner markers is about 20%.?ÿ About once every two or three months, I will do a survey that has every pin in and I dance a little jig.?ÿ In talking with folks from other parts of the country, their surveys consist mostly of tying down existing monuments.?ÿ Kentucky does not have a way to record your everyday retracement survey without recording a new deed and attaching it.?ÿ A few counties will let you record a plat but the indexing is poor and not likely to be found.?ÿ So what we work with generally are maybe 5% original pins, 15% markers of dubious origin, and "the art of surveying".?ÿ ?ÿ
What's it like in your neck of the woods?
I'm also a Surveyor in the Colonial state of NJ.?ÿ We work state wide.?ÿ Finding reliable control to work off is hot or miss, depending on where the property is located.?ÿ In urban areas, finding anything originally set is the impossible dream, in rural farmland areas, it's kind of hit or miss, in forrested areas, if your crews know what they are doing, they can sniff out some burried ancient field stones, in residential subdivisions constructed after the early 80's, most times you will find control monuments, if you look for them but still run into pin cushioning because people don't look hard enough for them.
I work for a county in a PLSS state, and when I started, 22% of all section corners I searched for were lost, damaged or missing. I generally replace about 20-30 a year, file land corner records on about 80-100, and tie about 150.?ÿ
The last time the county had a County Surveyor was 1957. I have been tasked with making up for decades of neglect.?ÿ
In my PLSS county, I would estimate that we can count on typically finding monuments about 75% of the time. The bad news is that about half the retracementss done report found pins not good enough so we see pincushions due to this better survey. The good news is that we have statutes that require the deposit of plats in the county surveyor index. Since 1987 enacted, there has been a notable increase in compliance with standards!
In Oklahoma, doing a boundary survey, even in urban areas, usually meant finding the PLSS corners and calculating the subdivision lot corner from plat dimensions.?ÿ I introduced my coworkers to the concept of searching for subdivision lot corners before staking and **gasp** calculating lost corners from what was found.?ÿ ?ÿI'm pretty sure that they went back to their old ways before I got to the state line.?ÿ Under those conditions it is not a wonder that pincushions happen. We did generally find something at nearly every PLSS corner we searched, although it was often no more than a mag nail or 60d at the intersection of dirt roads.
In Oregon, at least in the urban areas, the name of the game is lot corners. I might go a whole year without touching a PLSS corner.?ÿ ?ÿBelow is a screen cap of a portion of my fair city over which I have a thorough survey in progress. I bet I found monuments at 10% of the corners??ÿ I think I have set more control monuments than I have found of boundary.?ÿ
In many of our older towns, started not long after the Government surveys, we find paper plats, beautifully drawn, with everything square and adding up precisely to 330 or 660 or 1320 or 2640 by some similar number depending on the aliquot part for which the owner was creating blocks and streets.?ÿ Those nice pretty numbers do not come close to being in agreement with the distances in the real world.
It depends on the locale.?ÿ
Modern subdivisions (post 1980+-) where monumentation bonds are required it's near 80%+, and pincushions are rare.?ÿ Funny how posting a big bond that's not released until the City/County confirms monumentation is in place makes surveyors tow the line. Easy work.
Older record urban subdivisions (1900s to 1950s) it's a tossup whether original lot monuments were even set, lost due to?ÿimprovements causing destruction, maybe 30%. But with those and the street C/Ls,?ÿ subdivision boundary monuments?ÿ and some lot mons that are still extant, intent can be reconstructed by protraction.?ÿ If my analysis results in locations which confirm occupation, and a not of record (ancient) monument is close I'll hold it.?ÿ Seen a few pincushions but it's fairly easy to reject the jackleg ones.
Rural surveys are a whole different ball game, over a hundred years old and the only record is the GLO patent followed by non-monumented deed partitions where owners have been in repose for decades.?ÿ Maybe 10% of monuments are recoverable.?ÿ Sorry but I'll charge thousands of dollars because I'll have to do deep research, survey miles of lines for evidence, spend a lot of effort recovering obliterated corners and reject jackleg pincushions based on that they are hundreds of feet wrong which exposes me to liability.?ÿ ?ÿSavvy owners with thousands of acres will hire me, the boutique ranchers reject my estimate, that's fair.
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I'm guessing between 80-90%.?ÿ
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It varies widely from lots of monuments to nothing in the neighborhood we would recognize as a surveyor??s monument. Depends a lot on the county. Where I??m working currently in the mountains of Tulare County almost every original GLO monument has been recovered and perpetuated.
15 years ago in the Sutter Buttes the original sheep herder owners had thousands of acres and didn??t care about the GLO originals. There were miles of stone fences but there was no rhyme or reason, just convenient terrain following alignments. Some Counties have/had good surveying culture such as Mendocino, Santa Barbara, Kern, Los Angeles, and San Diego so there are good records and things are pretty close to where they are supposed to be. Every county has a black hole somewhere, though.
My in laws had a rural mountain subdivision lot (1970) in Placer, I was measuring around, the streets were pretty good but the rear corners were a real cr-p shoot, it??s like they just chucked the rebar in the general direction of the corner. I called the County Surveyor person I knew, he confirmed that subdivision is one of their ??problems.??ÿ
midlands, pee dee area , area going toward the coast in South Carolina usually around 75% i would say. you never know what may have occurred since the plat you are retracing. angry adjoiners, just freaking general craziness from persons. If this was easy, you know the rest about that statement. Good professional judgement, old evidence of line, parol evidence from older owners. our mostly rural stuff here. we try and do what will be agreeable if there is controversy.
quasi judicial, objective opinion from ourselves. no one answer. Dang, i should have gotten that law degree. too old, but everyone around here knows me and that i will do what is right. that is probably what matters i believe.
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ya'll be safe and hug those grand babies.
I've heard rumors of that 80-90%.?ÿ Seems like a very nice life.?ÿ I could save a fortune in rebar and caps.
Yeah, I'm thinking mostly about areas outside of the old city/town areas. If you're in an older subdivision then it's more iffy finding monuments. Although there always seems to be evidence of block corners and downtown I tend to consider 0 building lines and concrete structures to be monuments, obliterated corners.?ÿ
But outside of those areas in more modern subdivisions you can expect to find most monuments, and most sectional corners will have monuments or evidence.?ÿ
I've always had a knack for scaring up corner evidence. A few years ago I took a job that required me to find evidence without any precise equipment. I routinely found buried stones missed by every modern surveyor. It also pushed me to up my game relating GLO records to geographic coordinates. Many of those oldtimers did a better job than we give them credit for.
As for the OP, percentages vary widely. Some areas it's 10%, some it's closer to 350%. Depends on the number of mathemagical idiots that have rolled through town...
?ÿ"some it's closer to 350%."
Pincushions R' Us Surveying Perfectionists???? ???? ???? ?????ÿ
