This was my weekend project which had been in the planning stages for the past three years. Even though USC&GS had not found the 1889 marker when they placed their own nearby marker in 1934, NGS has maintained a position for the 124-year-old monument. Dave Doyle informed me that the early Missouri River Commission monuments had been incorporated into their network through a Least Squares Adjustment even though many of the physical monuments had never been found or occupied. I had calculated the azimuth and a distance of 17.78' based upon the historic information. The two monuments were found to be 17.65' apart. Amazing!
I also always look around these sites for other relics and found two square nails used for the 1889 wooden tower and two bolts and three nuts used for the 1934 steel Bilby Tower.
Once again - great job. And it's amazing the monuments were so close to the computed distance apart.
The quality of work that was done in the late 1800's - early 1900's amazes me.
That's just cool as hell man! Good job.
Do you get paid to do this by the government or is this a hobby? I gotta know. 🙂
That is fantastic. And the terrain is also fantastic. Heck, I want to move to South Dakota now. Beautiful.
Kudos, Sir!
Ever think about coming out to the west coast?
I've been wanting to search for The NGS station SD0685/C&GS station CLIFF for the last 5 or 6 years. I go camping at Kalaloch every year, for the last 15 years. My grandson and I went up and looked at doing a search in 2007. We found that we'd have to make a pretty good hike up the beach at low tide. So we just looked for, and found the one up by the highway. Sorry, I looked for the pictures and couldn't find them....
Here is the description:
SD0685'DESCRIBED BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1929 (RDH)
SD0685'THE STATION IS ON THE SECOND POINT S OF CEDAR CREEK, CALLED THREE
SD0685'TREE POINT, BECAUSE OF THREE DEAD TREES ON TOP OF THE BLUFF WHICH
SD0685'SHOW UP CLEARLY FROM THE BEACH FROM BOTH N OR S. IT IS A PROMINENT
SD0685'POINT AS IT JUTS OUT FROM THE BLUFF LINE ABOUT 75 METERS AND IS
SD0685'QUITE NARROW BEING ONLY A KNIFE-EDGE HOGBACK WHERE IT JOINS THE
SD0685'BLUFF.
SD0685'
SD0685'SURFACE AND REFERENCE MARKS ARE STANDARD BRONZE DISKS SET IN
SD0685'CONCRETE AS DESCRIBED IN NOTES 1A AND 11A. SUBSURFACE MARK IS MARKED
SD0685'AS DESCRIBED IN NOTE 7A, EXCEPT THAT IT CONTAINS A HYDROGRAPHIC MARK
SD0685'INSTEAD OF A TRIANGULATION MARK. THE STATION IS ON TOP OF THE POINT
SD0685'AT ITS SW CORNER BEING ABOUT 6 FEET FROM THE W EDGE AND 8 FEET FROM
SD0685'THE S EDGE. IT CAN BEST BE REACHED BY SCALING THE CLIFF FROM THE
SD0685'S SIDE.
SD0685'
SD0685'HEIGHT OF SIGNAL ABOVE STATION MARK - 3 METERS.
SD0685
SD0685 STATION RECOVERY (1930)
SD0685
SD0685'RECOVERY NOTE BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1930 (KTA)
SD0685'THE STATION WAS NOT VISITED BY THE PARTY BUT THE BANNER WAS IN PLACE.
SD0685
SD0685 STATION RECOVERY (1956)
SD0685
SD0685'RECOVERY NOTE BY US NAVY 1956 (CDG)
SD0685'THIS STATION WAS SEARCHED FOR BUT NOT RECOVERED. THE JUTTING POINT
SD0685'AS DESCRIBED HAS ERODED CONSIDERABLY AND IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT
SD0685'AND DANGEROUS TO REACH. NO TRACE OF THE MONUMENT WAS RECOVERED.
1 National Geodetic Survey, Retrieval Date = JULY 22, 2013
We could make it a Beer leg rendezvous and invite all who want to go! Maybe even get some CEU"s 😀
It would be like looking for a pirate treasure!
Doug
EDIT-
I did find some other points:
A PK nail in the campground
And this brass in a rock at Ruby Beach
sweet
Fantastic! Thanks for sharing that! Well done.:good:
Data sheets:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=OR0887 BRICKKILN (1889)
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=OR0886 BRICKKILN 2 (1934)
I'm wondering how the NGS decided to keep (or never considered?) two stations so close together in their data base (1st order and 2nd order) without super-good measurement between them. Probably not even Jerry's recent measurement meets 2nd order standards for ppm relative accuracy.
This is all done as a hobby on my own time and expense whenever I can fit it in. Both the Missouri River Commission and the Coast & Geodetic Survey did some mighty fine work back then, so it is rewarding to retrace their work. One of the main things I stress is that you have to want to find something on a personal level.
> I've been wanting to search for The NGS station SD0685/C&GS station CLIFF for the last 5 or 6 years.
Checking that position in GE it sure looks like a goner. At the least you better plan your search for low tide! Today would be a great day for it.
It was very common practice for USC&GS/NGS to set a "2" station (or 3, 4 or whatever) close to the location of a previously existing station. The basic issue was to create a designation that wouldn't be confused with the original station but retain the original naming convention. Whenever possible they tried to make a direct connection but that was not always possible because the older station was either destroyed or could not be located. If you remove these stations from the DB (hence the network) you can easily create situations in which the network in which the station(s) were originally set can become disconnected from the reference frame and not participate in future readjustments (which will always happen).
