A colleague and I have been kicking this thing around the office way too long and I'm looking for some fresh ideas.
Basically this Township corner (not on a standard parallel) is circumferented by government (City) ownership all the way around for no less than a mile. In the early sixties the COE constructed a reservoir and the City wound up with a butt-load of acreage all around the lake.
The nearest meridional corners are five miles south (mostly water) and two miles north.
The line was originally ran in 1872 defining dozens of townships. The notes are sparse and repetitive with no reporting of any astronomic or solar observations.
"North on a True Line...40ch., set post for corner common to Sec. 1, 6, 31 & 36. No trees within meas. dist."
The roads and fences have long been dozed. Archival aerials from the fifties are little help due to poor exposure and scale. It's really even hard to find anything on the old prints to relate to.
None of the n-s section lines appear to have any sort of semblance to being in a line. In fact, a line between the two closest corners on the meridian (seven miles) gores west and shortens the e-w township line. A line that is already over 2 ch. shorter than reported. The nearest established corner west is four miles. There is a corner 1 mile east, but the distances are so fubared, I hesitate to even acknowledge its existence, except that I probably need an opposing corner to derive a latitudinal location.
The work we were originally preparing was taken care of a month ago. We kept looking at everything thinking "I wish that Township corner was there...". This has turned into a "pro bono" boner.
The location of this corner has little, if any privately owned property tied to it. It's kinda turned into a "quest". Any ideas other than Holy Cow's wet-paint tennis ball?
The entire process to come to a conclusion in this case is so crude that I believe it would be satisfactory to toss the wet/painted tennis ball from a helicopter hovering over the approximate corner as scaled in from aerial photos.
First, go in search of someone who will admit to overdosing themselves with Ex-Lax so you will know you have at least one person who will give a sh.......
Basically this Township corner (not on a standard parallel) is circumferented by government (City) ownership all the way around for no less than a mile. In the early sixties the COE constructed a reservoir and the City wound up with a butt-load of acreage all around the lake.
I would bet that the USACE has done a dependent resurvey around that reservoir or had the BLM do it, sometimes they contracted local firms for that work. The firm I worked for in the 70's had two contracts consisting of bringing in State Plane Control Chords from Triangulation Stations and the cadastral work needed to describe and convey property, IE; taking lines. Now all you need to do is start digging for those records. They exist someplace, might even pay to ask the Bureau of Reclamation.
jud
Look up the coordinates of the beginning point of the PM and compute the location. Take your hand held GPS, walk to the point, drive a rusty rebar in the ground, put your cap on it, and dare anybody to prove you wrong!
🙂 😀
Could you give me the approximate latitude and longitude of the township corner based on GPS
or google?
I agree with Jud. More research sounds like a good idea.
Just call the BLM.
They will be happy to do a dependent resurvey of the four townships and set the common corner, along with all of the other corners and quarters. Well, if they can't do it why do we have a BLM?
Should be interesting.B-)
hey just keep the cap off and call it found, while you're at it.;-)
Jud
One would think the Corps would have some good information, they do on almost all of the other BOR/COE reservoirs built around the same time. This one (Elm Creek Reservoir) is a "black hole" according to the Tulsa Office.
I believe the City took possession of the surrounding lands as part of the agreement for construction. This may have something to do with the fact that the Corps seems to have no records. The City has construction records of the roads and some large diameter water lines in the area. Those prints reflect absolutely zero land corner ties, merely topo calls to roads and fences.
In the early '70s the Highway Dept. did a fair amount of work for a corridor north of here. Instead of providing section boundary work along the south tier of the township north, they did "1/2" section boundaries and stopped at the quarter corners 1/2 mile north. That information is almost indecipherable; relocating the 1/4 corners to the north by their data places everything in some rather odd locations. I don't think they did half of what is represented on paper.
I've got it narrowed down to a 100' diameter circle. It's a head scratcher. I might go out there later on today with a pin finder and "miraculously" find something...:snarky:
R1W & R2W, Cleaveland/Oklahoma County Line
If I have identified the proper location, based on the USGS view of this, I strongly recommend the helicopter/tennis ball solution. Dare anyone else to prove you wrong.
R1W & R2W, Cleaveland/Oklahoma County Line
> ......Dare anyone else to prove you wrong.
I would go for the Double Dog Dare......
But, that's just me......
:snarky:
My thoughts
Other than the patent notes for the sections that are common with this corner, I would totally disregard all of them, and chase the 4 original descriptions for the township, in EVERY direction (i.e. 6 miles to each wind).
If you're gonna go hunt that puppy, then go back to where it came from. 🙂
My thoughts
That's basically what I was saying above. Go back to the PM Initial point and start from there!
😛
My thoughts
If that star on the photo marks the approximate location. There is much better evidence within feet showing where the original location probably was by looking at occupation lines and road C/L's, an intersection of those lines would be hard to defeat if used as the best evidence for that corner. We used to sometimes go 5 miles and proportion in corners ignoring local evidence until we wised up. Our teachers never surveyed but knew it all and we had no experienced mentors to guide us so we looked, not for local evidence but looked for original evidence that we seldom ever found in developed areas, those surveys are still causing problems today. I now bow down to local evidence if there something reveling what those who were there before me thought the proper location was and that location is found to be in reasonable agreement with record and other surrounding evidence, checking section corners and quarter corners would re-enforce the strength of the found local evidence or cause a second look. Rerunning lines from miles away is as bad as proportioning unless that work is only used to refine search areas.
jud
Jud
Jud, you miss my point. If you're gonna burn time and money chasing a corner that has no need to be found, I by GOD wanna know if the townships are short or long. GPS makes this pretty easy, although 6 miles is humming for most RTK shots.
🙂
Real world is gonna be different. If you want to increase the fun, get every damn section and quarter corner along the lines and see if the east west line really is curved. 🙂
the Manual fails
The physical evidence of the remains of the original lines is the only thing there is to hang your hat on in this case.
Whether I really said or not, my original post hinted at the fact that restoration of this corner by the book is a failure. There are numerous reasons, but the one that is glaring is the fact that two separate surveys (running the meridian and then the subdivision of the south line of the township to the north) had chains that were not the same length.
This isn't an isolated occurrence. The meridian measures short about 12 lnks. per mile, not bad. The south line of the township to the north was reported as being 1.65 chains long. In reality it's about 3.5 chains short. There is truly no harmony in trying to reconstruct the notes and compare them to the historic occupational evidence.
Today I did find the remains of a parcel adjacent to this corner. This narrows the "ellipse of probability" down to about 13' by 5'. I think it's time to break out the high-tech equipment and put this one behind me:
Attaboy, Paden
:good: :good: :good: :good: :good:
Jud
>
> I've got it narrowed down to a 100' diameter circle.
>
*NEVER PROPORTION*
Take the Road Intersection!
I hope your joking if this your obliterated corner location. I'm too stupid to tell.
[sarcasm]NEVER TRUST FIELD MUT[/sarcasm]