I send my party chief out to find corners on a 1970-1980 era property, it's a number of disconnected tracts.
There were some legals filed. And some maps produced by the surveyor at the time. Not sure if the surveyor had much of anything to do with the legals, but I know he drew the plats.
I think at the time some engineer wrote the legals since they aren't anywhere near the style of the surveyor. He called monuments, adjoiners and such, the legals that got filed don't.
I'm not sure if the filed legals were before the surveys, or after, there is no way to figure out a timeline.
But we find lots of monuments, none of which, except for the sectional corners, are near the positions described in the legals, some are wayyyyyy off.
What we did find are some stakes, lath that someone set kinda near the legals (I'm guessing a handheld-great) average 10-20 feet from the legal corners.
Sometimes surveying is so much fun;-)
My favorite Engineer-Surveyor, Paul Schmook, practiced out of Fortuna in the 1940s and 1950s.
A block in Weott was cut up by legal descriptions, probably written by the Title Company.
Schmook did the surveying. He sort of followed the recent legals, generally, but he set his pipes how he thought it should be, I guess. It's been like that for 60 years. One lot is clearly not rectangular in the legal (it was sort of a remainder lot). Schmooky-baby squared that puppy up.
I probably shouldn't say it was an engineer, just that this was a railroad/mine project that never got off the ground.
Clearly someone other than the surveyor wrote the metes legals, and they got filed, maybe the right-of-ways were refined but never made it to the courthouse. Anyway, the maps are not lined up with the legals, usually by hundreds of feet:-(
I was involved with a powerline right-of-way that traversed west to east across Anza Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County.
In the 1920s when the permits were issued by the Federal Power Commission it was all Federal land except for the railroad checkerboard. The power line is actually in the adjoining Sections from the maps prepared by the power company (about half a mile off). They also got some easements from private owners, in the wrong sections :-). Good stuff! As far as we know, no one ever contacted the Railroad to get easements; they just built the power line across the desert like they owned it.
It had to do with a big dispute between State Parks and SDG&E. They wanted to build a transmission line across the Park and the Park didn't want that. They had 100' were the lands were unpatented in the 1920s but nothing except for prescriptive rights across the railroad sections. It is all now in the State Park. SDG&E had to hire their own surveyor, I never did any surveying, just the typical trying to answer lawyer questions from the office with insufficient information.
The power companies used to get blanket easements over everyone. Years later they figured they could cross with a high power line since they had an easement for a little two wire drop.......:-(
