Section Breakdown

Should I be a fence line surveyor or a deed staker?

Is that a rhetorical question?

😉
Loyal

occupation

> A best fit of survey points shows most inside a foot wide corridor with a few outliers of up to maybe 2 feet.

I'm confused of what this statement means.....But does it imply that you can establish the original section corner locations to within one or two feet. What are "survey points"? (I'm not being obnoxious or sarcastic if it comes off that way, I am trying to understand.)

Neither.
Why a section breakdown?
Try doing a boundary survey.

Pablo B-)

I walked the fences taking a shot every 50 to 75 feet or at the oldest posts where I could find them. Then I input into a best fit line routine. So for a half mile through several parcels that is the results. So the question is did it take a survey line to be this straight or were they just fencing off the pasture that day to keep the cows in? I suppose its a judgment call. If they were just fencing in the cows and horses then they have used these as the boundaries ever since.

If I'm to put another punch mark in the brass tablets at the corners then the brass needs to be 10 to 30 feet in diameter. With things how they are and brass as expensive as it is, the tablets got ripped up and melted a while back.

In my view re-establishing the section corners and then using them to stake out the descriptions is mostly a waste of time. The sure result is chaos. Never the less I been wasting a lot of time I can't bill trying to sort it out (several days). I do have two solid corners with corner records to tie out the boundary survey too though. So what I do will be retraceable in the future.

I would know and map all evidence. Map the uses. Map all section mons sufficient to a GLO rule procedure. Until I compare them, I cannot follow any obvious attempts at layout of the descriptions. If someone made a poor stab at a center section, and everyone followed it with fences and calls, it's pertinent and has legal standing. If there is harmony on the ground, be sure to leave it there as benefits the locals desires.

Do the theoretical layout, then compare the chain of titles as the lands were divided up. Let the history be known as the record shows, then look at establishment on the ground. A method to the maddness almost always presents itself.

You did mention a pin and cap, no record. Follow up on that for sure. Could be a map in someones attic in the hood. Local surveyors tend to know about history of surveyors in the area. Talk up a few. You sometimes come up with an orginal field book on that type of stuff.

I understand now. survey points are the shots on the fences.

As I understand it you looked for property pins for some of the descriptions, but found none. My first inclination would be to find old property corners that had calls to the section corners and back in the section corners from those calls. But that sounds like a wash as well. If you set the section corners from the fences, would you match the occupation lines on the particular property you are trying to survey? Is the property you are trying to survey fenced? Can you run the ties backward from your property's fence?

As to whether you are going to be a fenceline surveyor or a deed-staker, I would answer you should be a fenceline surveyor and a deed staker. In my opinion, you are trying to "stake the deed" and fences are sometimes the best available evidence as to what the deed is describing.

It's all fenced for a long time.

If I were to re establish these obliterated corners I just wouldn't use one parcel. I'd try to fit as best as possible all the original occupied descriptions tied to the corner. In the end you'd just need to sort of average it out and make a call. Which occupations lead back to the same approximate location and which are definite outliers.

NOBODY will pay a surveyor to do this (costs to much) and they haven't done so for multiple decades. Somebody laid it out somehow to begin with and the landowners have just gone with it from there. Why not, why shouldn't a boundary last forever. They didn't pay all that exact attention to the descriptions either OTHER THAN the title folks and recorders made the record nice and tidy. The descriptions all fit together nice and square and usually exactly within a 80 chain x 80 chain idealized section (ignoring the usual difference in east/west chaining by the GLO). Paper surveys and then maybe go out and measure the distance from the existing fence on one side. Where east met west or north met south they usually only built one fence or used the existing fence that was already there (they physically closed the gap or gave up the overlap). That's how the idealized paper surveys ended up on the ground (at least from my viewpoint).

Bringing the modern surveyor into this situation has not been good. Now you have some fences that have been moved to the new stakeout so you need to sort this system out from the original. The only good part is since about 1990 many of these surveys are filed. You can see the square of the surveyed boundary offset from the square of the occupied fence right on the plats. Apparently that doesn't bother a lot of surveyors and usually there is no explanation either. The fences are just off from the deed llines. Most fences don't move and I've had multiple landowners tell me that after the surveyor left they just got together and decided to keep on using the fences. But then there are some landowners that it caused enough problems that a surveyor is at some risk even being out there. They’d just as soon hang you from the nearest tree. I don't have a sign on my truck. I've been approached by some real hostle landowners. A surveyor is in the same clsss as a cattle rustler to these old timers.

Now some folks believe in a different system. Everything is off. I've been told the whole town is off. Or that every fence is off. So who started all this BS. The town has been here since 1859. I think it's a little late for it to be off.

Take the cookie crumbles and put the cookie back together! Deeds junior/senior and time of creation vs recordation, fences near the time of establishment vs newly constructed, occupation etc. I find the time in the field is miniscule to the time of research and knowing what happened when and how. Know what your looking for before you go to the field.

Pablo ...B-)

Yep, a little late.....

Having had the responsibility of surveying after quite a few quick and dirty (cheap) surveyors, I came up with the following attitude that kind of combines all the different options into one. Firstly, I HATE PIN CUSHIONS! How can surveyors explain the two monuments (or more) at a common corner of three or four properties? We can’t. So on with my attitude: When I find something that doesn’t fit and can identify the surveyor, I contact them for some consultation. Usually they are long gone or you can’t identify the monument source. So you are left to fix it or accept it. No Pin Cushions because they do not help anyone! They create more confusion than they do solutions. Usually the fix can’t be done because of expense and occupation. So to accept the found corners and occupation fences, I talk to the property owners to see what they accept. Most of the time the owners accept the found corners and fences and I accept them, doing my work to “fit into” that framework and finish the job. This attitude also helps to fit the occupation on the ground. I can only wish that all the previous surveyors did a perfect job and my job was easy to fit into theirs. My “attitude” is more expensive, but it seems to hold the fabric of the property system together better than any alternatives that I have found. A note on the survey explains that the set monuments hold the layout of occupation and found monuments in the area and not the theoretical or mathematical solutions. Like I said, it is an attitude. I have no better solution!

> Now some folks believe in a different system. Everything is off. I've been told the whole town is off. Or that every fence is off. So who started all this BS. The town has been here since 1859. I think it's a little late for it to be off.

Looks like the town was "off" in 1873 based on the Ferron Survey. [sarcasm]Weird he didn't recover any of the Mogo original survey
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It may help to get a copy of the Townsite survey (if available), and see how it relates to the PLSS at the time. If the road you are talking about that is 50 or so feet off of the south east, it may be the N-S road shown on the Dependent Resurvey.

May be missing some details here, but I think you are doing the right thing by analyzing all the available evidence, and think that no matter the outcome, you will have a strong defendable survey if ever in court. Much better than running out one day and slapping in some monuments at fence corners, and collecting your fees. I don't think its a good idea to take one approach in every instance (fenceline surveyor vs. Section line breakdown Surveyor). Every situation is different.

Just drove through this town 2 days ago on my way back from Schofield! Good Luck with your survey

> Now some folks believe in a different system. Everything is off. I've been told the whole town is off. Or that every fence is off. So who started all this BS. The town has been here since 1859. I think it's a little late for it to be off.

I certainly understand that. I suspect the town in and of itself is good evidence as to where some original corners once were. Town buildings don't tend to move or get dug up as often as property corner or section corner monuments do.

Ferron found a very few Mogo posts but many more mounds. I've never seen a Mogo corner and the most recent find I've read about is from 1898.

A BLM guy told me there was a dispute over Mogo's bill at the time. He said Washington sent someone out to investigate and they could only find about 40% of Mogo's corners. This is real close to the time of the survey done in 1856. Ferron was here in 1871-72. Anyway T14S R4E was completely resurveyed by Ferron in 1872 and the balance of the Subdivision done by Breckon in 1890. So in this township no need to look for Mogo. Down in the lower valley there are few townships completely done by Mogo and it never was resurveyed by the GLO. So all there is is occupation and fences that may or may not have been a perpetuation of the Mogo survey. I think much of it was resurveyed by the county surveyor BUT there are no records that I've ever been able to find and I have asked. If the county has them they don't know they have them. I suspect they where pitched to get some storage room at some point.

Whether the town is off or not is sort of a trick question. Yes when Ferron came in he reported that the town was a mile or too different than Mogo reported survey and there is a write up in the notes. But I'm sure the town is still where they built it starting in 1859. Yeah, I got copies all the original plats and such. There are problems there also.

There is the reality of where things actually are and then the fiction of where the records say they are or should be. It's a lot better to correct the record than pick up the town and move it. I've actually had a big discussion with one surveyor that wanted to show part of the town was off. Had the lines going through houses and the streets not even where the physical streets are. These streets might have migrated a bit, a few feet of so, but some of the oldest houses weren't built in the street to begin with. What was it Cooley said something about a man trained in science can't..............

The land that was patented to the town are aliquot parts from the Ferron survey. They never moved any streets. The original town plat was prepared in 1888 prior to statehood in 1896 (recorded Aug 1896). The plat is not all that accurate when it comes to some chaining.