Recent 1898 Bench Mark finds.

Fascinating. How I envy you.

Gorgeous scenery.

You are referring to his wife?

Jerry,

Should the monument's description be used as evidence of the original section corner?

Jack

I have a story in the works exactly on that issue. Many of these early USGS markers were placed near section corners. Some have now evolved to be the section corner. This might be the case with DW 5131. I'm doing more research on this one since it is now stamped as the corner instead of 2.3' away.

Take a look at DW 6443. The 1898 notes state it was 5.25 from the section corner. Today it is 4.3'. Whoever perpetuated that section corner probably did not know about the USGS notes.

http://www.penryfamily.com/surveying/usgsdw6443.html

Jenny usually gets her picture in on at least one find. Things usually go pretty well together until I take off through the woods with the GPS receiver and in my eagerness get out of sight. That is usually met with a stern "Slow Down"!!!!

Below is the south end point of the Custer Meridian we found in 2011. Someone stole the marker and only the stem remained.

As always, nice work Jerry!

For DW 6912, have you (will you?) do any GPS elevation work to see if that existing rock surface is at the published elevaton (6913.7) of the original marker? That would confirm for sure that the original rock surface has been removed. Just wondering...

Nice job. Great research and documentation.

Dave, That thought had crossed my mind. Some of these bench marks are so hard to find due to things changing, but having an elevation would be another tool to get you closer.

I can't help but notice how much feed (grass) there is in all those pictures. They must be saving the feed for the winter grazing?

These pictures opened a floodgate of memories, thank you for posting them along with your fascinating research.

When I got out of the Navy in 78 I wanted to get as far away from the sea as possible. Dupree SD, while being on the reservation, was interesting but flat. I wandered over to Sturgis for bike week and worked my way down to Lead & Deadwood.
I worked for a little while in the Homestake mine but did not like being a mile under ground so looked around for some thing else. One of my friends worked in the exploration department and knew of some claim surveying coming up and set me up with an interview.
To this point in my life I had worked many jobs from farming, ranching, lumber mills to machine shops, restaurants and what-not.
Now I was gonna survey. I had seen a couple of surveyors traverse across a neighbors field when i was 7 years old and the memory stayed with me some where in the back of my mind.
I found myself, early one morning, loading the truck for the days work. I must admit that I was too ignorant to realize what all those 4x4 posts would mean to me as low man on the totem pole. Claimco was the name of the outfit, from somewhere in Arizona. They had a lot of claims to stake all over the Black Hills and I enjoyed almost every minute of it. Admittedly it is a little different from boundary surveying. Each claim was 320'x640'. They were clustered but each claim was monumented with 6 posts that I humped in on a pack frame. Some posts were dug in but many stood in stone cairns. A lot of work but the satisfying kind. A compass, quad sheet and 300' fiberglass tape were all we needed.
It is hard to match the beauty of the Black Hills. My friend in exploration was a geologist/surveyor and we would hike all over the place to see geological features and old mines. The Black Hills are special on many levels, I didn't miss them so much till I saw your photos.

Thanks.