So I am surveying several vacant lots for one owner located within about a 3000' x 3000' area. I've cobbled together about half a dozen filed map subdivisions dating from about 1918-1922.
I get out there and see that many of the paper roads have been cleared by other land owners in preparation for development. I find a few things (some original and some new) and figure out an approximate boundary. The stuff seems to work 'ok' but could be better so I attempt to recover more of the old original control monuments. The ones on the paper streets should be there since they are clearing on the opposite side of the R/W. Lo and behold:
This one has been uprooted along with the tree stump (I tied the ribbon to help see it in the photo).
This one is broken in half and upside down.
This situation presented itself time and time again (either broken or plucked from the earth). Eventually I hung my hat on what was left and when I went to set the first corner I hit an undisturbed monument that I had missed during my original recon...(that was a good feeling).
I guess the "surveyors" who laid out the clearing didn't mark the monuments at all or probably even find them. There was only the clearing limit ribbon and no ribbon of any other color or lath or anything.
These monuments had been carefully and precisely set by H.C. Shinn of Trenton, NJ almost 100 years ago and got pulled out a week before I needed them. I've followed his work before and was looking forward to doing so again.....guess it'll just take more effort this time around.
Definitely frustrating, but possibly profitable.
In PLSSia many of the original quarter sections were the standard NW, NE, SW or SE quarters claimed by settlers. Some settlers recognized they could get a better deal if they took this 80 and that 80 over there. Once in a very great while the best chunk of land was in the center of the section. I've worked with less than a handful of cases where the settler's 160 was four 40's with one coming from each of the standard quarter sections. During the research phase of one of those jobs I discovered that a survey had been made over 100 years previously and substantial stones set at all eight outer corners. Arrived onsite to discover the overgrown Tonka toys had already dozen out the massive tree rows that had grown up along those lines. Bare ground and tree roots were all that was left along that two miles of perimeter. Eventually found all but one of the original stones dozed up into the brush piles far from where they had been for over 100 years.
On my visits to Jersey both North and South through past decades, I was always impressed by the quality of the survey monuments that exists either found or set. Mr. Shinn’s monuments are a testament to that practice of Jersey surveyors.
First of and most important is that it gives landowners/public sense of the importance and permanent nature of property corners. The public seeing a well-constructed and identifiable marker respects the survey. The placing of a 2-bit rebar or some salvaged plumbing pipe with no survey identifier lessens the importance of the survey marker. IMO.
Tough break on the markers. Do you think a “surveyor” was involved or was the destruction was called by an overzealous construction crew ?
> Tough break on the markers. Do you think a “surveyor” was involved or was the destruction was called by an overzealous construction crew ?
It's in an undeveloped part of town where there is little to go by to figure out even approximately where you are. It's a considerably large section of Pine Barrens (at least large by Jersey standards). 😛 The clearing follows the right-of-way lines pretty accurately but I just can't see why whoever laid out the clearing didn't mark it as to preserve the monuments (if they knew they were there). I'm thinking they had to have surveyed it. Those photos I posted are over 1000' from the paved road into the wooded area. I think it would be difficult to follow the line that far without surveying it.
Well if it was in the Barrens then the Devil made them do it.;-)
Somebody went and put a bull dozer target on them by wrapping flaggin around them.
😉
