From what you mention there was a second survey after the GLO (found in the county records) of the 1-1/2 miles showing corners and the total distance on the survey is 7980 (record 7920). Then a new retracement finds the total distance to be 7982. That puts a bunch of weight on the second survey. It's tough to throw that out.?ÿ
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I have the benefit of reading 4 pages of misunderstandings and miscommunications, so here goes:
Husker is correct here, the entire point of proportioning is to adjust my chain to whichever prior surveyor??s chain I??m proportioning to. So if I have a record length of 80.00 chains and the original record length between found monuments is 120.00 chains and say my measured distance is 121.00 chains then the computation is 80/120=?/121.00=80.67 chains. Say another surveyor measured 5 years ago 121.50 chains, yet it makes no sense to substitute 121.50 chains for the original record of 120.00 chains.
If you have the position of the missing corner from the 5 year old survey it may be appropriate to proportion using the 5 year old data against yours.
It is never correct to mix apples and oranges.
Perhaps buy the errant surveyor a beer of his choice at the taproom and educate him on this.
Proportion is mathematical so 1/3 of whatever would be the same regardless of what number you use.?ÿ I would reference the GLO distance.?ÿ More important is that you are truly using two original monuments to go between (or properly restored locations from original evidence).
Putting that aside what I see ALL THE TIME is using proportioning when there is maybe 100 years of fences and occupation (evidence of boundary location).?ÿ Proportion is be be used when there is NO EVEDINCE.?ÿ How can you blow off what has been there for 100 years or so.?ÿ Beyond that there are common laws that set boundaries (at least in my state, Utah) after 20 years of occupation.?ÿ SO, go ahead proportion all you want, set a new section marker where it has never been against all other evidence.?ÿ Stir up the crap all over the place, start lawsuits, make neighbors enemies.?ÿ Yeah, the surveyor has been their to fix what isn't broken, he knows his simple math quite precisely.?ÿ What he doesn't know, or ignores for speed and cost effiency, is boundary law.
What I'm thinking Husker is relating is there is a second survey showing 120.9 chains (7980') with a corner found at 80.9 chains. The surveyor set his corner using 7980 against the found distance of 7982 and prorated in the north 40 chains as shown on the second survey instead of 1/3 of 7982.......At least I think that's what he is saying.?ÿ
Good to see you back.
Long before the start of section corner filing with the State or some other public repository there were index cards or note cards.?ÿ Back in the day, the County Engineer or County Surveyor had a multitude of jobs that are normally farmed out to consulting engineering/surveying firms today.?ÿ We have two drawers in my county filled to the brim with index/note cards loaded with information similar to what Husker mentioned that the other surveyor had found and used to recreate older documented locations.?ÿ Many times these were found while doing what we would call a route survey today.?ÿ We have hundreds of cards with a dot or square drawn in the center with dashed lines going off at 3 to 10 directions with little triangles on the far ends indicating references/ties to that monument with some distance and description for each.?ÿ Most of ours date back to the 1920's to 1930's when many "roads" in the County were finally graveled or had crushed rock applied to the roadbed.?ÿ This was also the time when topo surveys were made to determine the appropriate sizes of culverts to be placed where none had existed before.?ÿ So the County crew was kept busy.?ÿ Those cards are just as valuable as something filed today in a State-sanctioned repository.?ÿ Even more so in many cases because there has been no modern survey conducted that was dependent on those monuments since they were last seen in your great-grandpa's day.?ÿ This is why I encourage all surveyors to get into their County's records and discover all the wonderful information that will never be in Hub Tack's data file.?ÿ Use every bit of information that can be found before accepting something just because some jakeleg filed some mythological data for monuments that are not in the true location.
Last, but not least,?ÿ there is nothing sacred about the ideal numbers in the PLSS (5280, 2640, 1320, 660, 330, 165, 82.5).?ÿ It is extremely rare to find true section breakdowns that come close to matching those numbers.
Yeah, you get into some weird stuff. Some surveyors I follow behind I see 4 different breakdowns of the section. And each guy had access to the previous guy. The first guy used GLO records, and so did the rest, but you know...each is better at measuring than the other guy, so we end up with 4 answers as to the center of section.
Lost or Obliterated? It makes a difference. Your lazy surveyor may have some information you do not have.?ÿ Case Law is becoming evermore a part of our corner placement. Quarter-Section Corners and Center of Section Corners are treated differently now than when I started surveying. I rarely follow the PLSS Manual to a "T" when setting those Corners. I never want to say "yes Judge, I know that corner I set was wrong, but I followed the Manual"?ÿ
@bill93 I??ve been waiting for @paden-cash to pass me into the 3rd spot but he is still several hundred posts behind me 🙁
Lets say I have 2 section corners which the GLO plat shows to be 80chains apart, with the 1/4 corner at the midpoint. The 1/4 corner is gone, never to be found, and I am tasked with resetting it.?ÿ
I have a resurvey done 50 years ago that reports the distance between the section corners as 5300.00 feet and the 1/4 corner at found at 2660.00/2640.00 feet. All original stones. The re-surveyor is known to have been reliable.
I survey and find the section corners at 5302.00 feet.?ÿ Am I going to place the 1/4 corner at the midpoint between them (2651'/2651' -proportioned per plat) or at 2661'/2641'?ÿ (proportion to the resurvey). It's a 10 foot difference.?ÿ
IMO, since I have this resurvey data, which appears to be reliable, the 1/4 corner isn't lost at all, but only obliterated. And therefore I should not be proportioning in the BLM rules sense of that word at all. On the other hand I am proportioning to the re-surveyors data.?ÿ I'm going with the latter.
A scenario I can visualize that may have happened in some case similar to Husker's is as follows:
1) Some piece of information for the southeast corner of 36 exists in old court house files that shows a stone was found with certain ties, as documented by the County Engineer back in 1925 while preparing what had been a primitive lane into an all-weather road.?ÿ That road may have run east to west.?ÿ The stone was discovered by the small pull-type road grader as they were cutting down a small hill for sight purposes.
2) A similar bit of information is found in the courthouse from about 1930 when the County was prepping the roadbed from the southeast corner of 25 going north for several miles.?ÿ That data indicates they found something (maybe a stone, maybe a pipe, maybe something else) at what they believed was representative of the southeast corner of 25.?ÿ As they worked north they discovered a stone at what they assumed was the east quarter corner of 25.
3)?ÿ The distance between the two objects in 2) was 40.7 chains.
4) Sometime later work was done along the east line of 36 and nothing was found at what they thought might be the east quarter of 36.?ÿ The distance along the entire east line of 36 is 80.2 chains.
5)?ÿ The other surveyor mentioned could not find anything at the northeast corner of 36 so measures the full mile and a half to find a total distance of 120.9 chains.?ÿ Using the record information he had dug up he determines the northeast corner of of 36 is 80.2 chains north of the southeast corner of 36 in agreement with 4) above and the east quarter of 25 is 40.7 chains further to the north in agreement with 3) above.?ÿ This does not agree with the standard use of 1/3 of the total distance per half mile in all cases (40.3 chains).?ÿ This causes a debate due to the 0.4 chain difference in location.?ÿ However, it is the correct location.
6) In this scenario it is very possible that the northeast corner of 36 would not be on a perfectly straight line between the southeast of 36 and the east quarter corner of 25 even though this falls on a range line where one should expect there to be no bend.?ÿ If the bend was significant, the searcher years later might not extend their search area large enough to find what is still there today, just waiting to be found.?ÿ The example I provided earlier with lat/long numbers for an example of a range line bend would put a straight line location over 50 feet from where the corner is located.
7)?ÿ There is a wealth of information provided in the road records maintained by the county.?ÿ We all need to find those records and see what they tell us.?ÿ In the vast majority of cases in my area the road would follow section lines or aliquot lines.?ÿ The exceptions to that rule of thumb are numerous and can be critical to recreating obliterated corners.?ÿ I can think of a one-mile long road that is basically a quarter mile east of the west section and is forty feet in width.?ÿ However, the centerline of the road starts 20 feet west of that quarter mile measure on the south and ends 20 feet east of that quarter mile measure on the other end.
@norman-oklahoma I agree that??s what I would do.
I would not mix and match data from different sources in the calculations.
I keep thinking I understand what you are saying and I agree with you but this throws me off,?ÿ "The error can be discovered only by a comparison between the monuments on the ground versus what was conveyed"
What was conveyed is dictated by the monuments on the ground. There is no difference. Now I am confused again. Do you mean the difference between the true distance and what was reported??ÿ
I believe Husker would also survey like you suggest, he is more concerned with the source of the data in his example,,,,,,,,,,that it's doesn't have a good pedigree. However, I'm hung up on the 7980 of the old map matching 7982 with a new survey; that's some substantial evidence of a good survey.?ÿ
Somewhere in this thread I recounted a 1930 era survey that held up in court over a prorate. The only remain evidence of the 1930 survey were monuments on the ground and a gridded paper drawing of the corners with coordinates and very brief notations. No bearings, no distances. The 1930 era surveyor used northings and westings. No field notes, no explanation of the surveys, just the graph paper. I have copies of the old graph paper and when the BLM showed up to do a retracement of the township they saw my corner record and made a beeline for the office, they wanted a copy real bad. It is like gold.?ÿ
IMO, since I have this resurvey data, which appears to be reliable, the 1/4 corner isn't lost at all, but only obliterated.
Key point, I think.