billvhill, post: 432076, member: 8398 wrote: I am currently working on a survey of the E1/2 of the NW1/4 of a section. The section is surrounded by fenced county roads. Another surveyor split the existing fences an set monuments at the W, N, and S 1/4 corners, also all 4 section corners. One of his surveys divides part of the W1/2 of the NW1/4 and the other part of the SW1/4. He accepted a fence line for the W1/16 line of the NW1/4 which is my clients west boundary, there is also an old fence along both the N-S and the E-W center of section lines. He sets a monument at the center of section which is my clients SE corner and does not use the fence but the intersections of the 1/4 corners. This monument has been disturbed by ditch maintenance and I'm planning on setting the center of section at the fence corner. This creates a conflict with his plat, but I would rather create a conflict with a surveyor than the land owners. My opinion is, If he was using the fence lines as the only available evidence, it should have included the center of section.
Being as the OP was stating his opinion and not asking a question, I will refrain from providing what I believe is the correct approach. However, if he was to phrase the OP as a question, I would offer with absolute certainty, "it depends".
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:76?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
Found the above link, dated 1859. Like mentioned above by someone else, some rules had been issued saying just run the east-west center of section line and use the middle of that. The part of Illinois I work in was surveyed about 1817, I'm not sure where the OP is from.
From my experience in Illinois looking at a lot of old county surveyors notes, none had a standard method of setting the center of section and they often just measured from one quarter corner to set it. Another issue with Illinois is that it was layed out with a compass and the distances are all over the place. As a rule a half mile varies from about 2635 to 2675, so distances are vague guides at best.
David Livingstone, post: 432178, member: 431 wrote: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:76?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
Found the above link, dated 1859. Like mentioned above by someone else, some rules had been issued saying just run the east-west center of section line and use the middle of that. The part of Illinois I work in was surveyed about 1817, I'm not sure where the OP is from.
From my experience in Illinois looking at a lot of old county surveyors notes, none had a standard method of setting the center of section and they often just measured from one quarter corner to set it. Another issue with Illinois is that it was layed out with a compass and the distances are all over the place. As a rule a half mile varies from about 2635 to 2675, so distances are vague guides at best.
I have never seen that before. It's pretty interesting that a sitting president would render an opinion on survey procedure (let alone any other act of congress for that matter; I assumed that was left up to the courts). Obviously there was a lot of conflicting local instruction in the survey community. The original 1811 language he recites is nearly verbatim and seems straightforward. I wonder what had everyone so confused?
The E-W and the N-S center of section line fences were used at the county road intersections to establish the 1/4 corners which are the same fence lines that extend to the center of section. So why use the fences at one end and not the other. The W/2 of the NW 1/4 has about 1427' E-W and the E/2 1320' +- a foot, as fenced and the distance from the C1/4 as fenced to the E1/4 corner, splitting the fences is 2641'. This leads me to believe that the extra was intentionally thrown into the west 1/2 of the section and it appears the west 1/2 of the NW1/4. That maybe why the surveyor accepted the fence at W1/16 line, but why not do the same at the C1/4. The fenced distances appear to be measured from East to West and -+ a foot tells me probably not by the land owners but a surveyor, however the fences were probably not constructed by a surveyor but by the land owner(s) who accepted this location. There are also ditches along the fences.
Bushwhacker, post: 432134, member: 10727 wrote: the Center 1/4 and all 1/16th corners were never anything but a mathematical position as no monument was ever set in a normal section unless by record or testimony you can prove that position was marked by a surveyor of some kind.
From the 2009 Manual:
3-137: "The protracted position of the legal subdivision corner on the survey plat is merely the first step in fixing the position of a corner. The corner position is fixed by the running and marking of the lines."
6-35 "A good faith location is a satisfactory location of a claim or of a local point. It is one in which it is evident that the claimant's interpretation of the record of the original survey as related to the nearest corners existing at the time the lands were located is indicative of such a degree of care and diligence upon their part, or that of their surveyor, in the ascertainment of their boundaries as might be expected for that time and place. This is referred to as the good faith location rule."
(emphasis added)
The 2009 manual adds much more, but I'm too busy to post all relevant parts that support and expand on these principles.
I don't think Lincoln wrote the when he was president, it was before.
I've spent a lot of time over the decades hanging out around center corners. Most of those corners have had good faith fences coming together to a single spot, usually terribly close to an ancient corner post or it's replacement but with ancient wire and other indicators pointing towards that location. The manual no longer applies. It's only use is as a desperate stab at doing something where nothing else is available, with the obvious exception of Government land of which we have none that I can think of. More than one method was used based on the year of Government survey in my area. Attempting to apply the manual's method is entertaining much of the time but reassuring at other times. I've seen the manual method result in a location within a foot of the corner post. I've seen the manual method miss the corner of long establishment by over 300 feet based on fraudulently established sections. A huge part of the foolishness of establishing the center corner by the manual method is that the quarter corners being used as the basis of establishment are not original corners, sometimes by a tremendous distance from the theoretical.
Holy Cow, that was well said and exactly the way I look at the issue.
Brian Allen, post: 432136, member: 1333 wrote: Yes, that is the "reasoning" many use, as it has been taught and preached by the unknowing for many decades. The problem with that line of "reasoning" is that it has no basis in the Manual, logic, or the law. In fact it is specifically contradicted.
Once one understands the legal concepts behind establishment, good faith, and the necessary stability of boundaries, the folly of the "logic" of the last sentence is apparent.
Huh? It certainly does have a basis in the Manual, logic, and law. Most old fences that go to the outside 1/4 cors. are accepted because they are the best available evidence of the original corner. There is usually no original C1/4. The fences at C1/4 could be accepted on the basis of bona fide rights, but that's a lot more complicated and hard to prove than best evidence of original position.
The big thing that this conversation seems to be missing is that the C1/4 may not be the same as the corner of the property that is described as the E1/2NW1/4. There are plenty of provisions in state law to provide for stability of boundaries without affecting a distant property owner who had no part in establishing the fences, and could loose significant property, if a surveyor and the law were to insist that the actions of two property owners can move the boundary of a third propert owner 1/2 a section away.
Bushwhacker, post: 432143, member: 10727 wrote: Apparently you have a different BLM Manuel than I,
I'd bet that Brian has the same BLM Manual as you, and likely several official versions that you may not have. I'd also bet that he has read them more completely than most surveyors.
When most surveyors say they are familiar with the Manual, they mean that they were taught and remember how to break down a section, that is, they have familiarity with the concepts presented in the first roughly 2/3 of Chapter 3 of the current or the 1973 Manuals. This is the part they cover the most in the college programs, and it's the part most commonly or most heavily tested for the licensing exams.
The problem being, that relatively few surveyors get the opportunity to subdivide a section for the first time anymore, but most will be tasked with identifying existing boundaries within a section. Because of how most have been taught, a great many of them won't recognize the difference.
The surveyor who is identifying existing boundaries within a section, if he is going to have a working understanding of only a portion of the Manual, would be better off reading a very limited portion of Ch 3 (????99, 100, 131-137) and then jumping ahead to Chapters 5, 6, & 7.
Here are a couple of passages from the 2009 Manual that should have every surveyor who thinks that monuments purporting to mark particular interior corners should be accepted only if they are "reasonably close" to the calculated positions, and only if set by a licensed surveyor should take careful note of. They should cause you to rethink and reexamine your understanding of validly established corners. Similar statements from knowledgeable people or authoritative sources prior to the 2009 Manual caused me to rethink what I thought I knew.
When a protracted line is placed on the ground, the line becomes fully established, not before.
From the 2009 Manual:
??3-99: In the public land survey system a corner is fixed in position by operation of law. Corners marked in official surveys followed by use are fixed in position by monuments. Only a small portion of corners are marked on the ground in original surveys. Subdivision-of-section corners are generally not marked. Their positions are fixed on the plat by protraction. Their positions are fixed on the ground by the survey process of running (and marking) line between marked corners, and setting monuments.
??3-137: The protracted position of the legal subdivision corner on the survey plat is merely the first step in fixing the position of a corner. The corner position is fixed by the running and marking of the lines.
A decision to set aside previously fixed local survey legal subdivision corners must be supported by evidence that goes beyond mere demonstration of technical error, reasonable discrepancies between former and new measurement, and less than strict adherence to restoration and subdivision rules. Were the Federal Government obliged to open the question as to the location of a particular tract or tracts over technical differences or reasonable discrepancies, controversies would constantly arise, and resurveys and readjudication would be interminable. The law gives these activities repose.
Bushwhacker, post: 432143, member: 10727 wrote: To do the way you purport to work we as a profession are no longer needed, the fence builders will have marked the boundaries and the GIS folks can determine the measurements.
You seem to read his post as saying "surveyors should always just accept the old fence corners, regardless of what the math says." That's not at all what he said though. He said that a surveyor doing this sort of work must consider all of the evidence available to him and give serious consideration as to whether the existing fence corners best identify the true corner positions, and that quite often, given the full body of evidence and the actual guidance of the law, the locations of long existing fences comport with or are the best evidence.
Go back and read Dane Ince's post. Look for the answers to the who, what, when, and why of the fences. Sometimes a fence is just a fence, and sometimes it's the best evidence of the originally established, and thus true corner locations.
As long as boundaries need to be accurately identified, there will always be the need for a professional who can identify, understand, and interpret all of the evidence to make that identification. A fence may be evidence. A GIS tech will never be able to properly recognize and analyze all of the evidence that may indicate a boundary's true location, nor be able to recognize it from evidence which merely appears to identify that location.
Bushwhacker, post: 432143, member: 10727 wrote: There is nothing to say that a fence corner can't be their Property Corner but probably not the Center 1/4 Corner.
Unless there has been a change by operation of law (i.e. prescription, a boundary line adjustment, or a boundary line agreement based on subjective uncertainty) their is nothing in the law that would allow for a property corner described as the C 1/4 to be anywhere other than at the C 1/4. While the surveyor should have the expertise to recognize evidence that suggests such an operation of law may have happened, he does not have the authority to adjudicate a result.
Bushwhacker, post: 432143, member: 10727 wrote: Just a question, if it is taught that way and is published that way how did you be come the all knowing and I and the majority of the surveyors I know become the unknowing.
I wondered this for a while. It's obvious that your assumption is that "if that's what's taught, it must be right." That was my initial assumption as well. I was ticked when I discovered that reasonable assumption to be flat wrong.
My theory is that it largely began when civil engineering tacitly claimed surveying as a subset of that practice, the colleges & universities put survey programs under their schools of engineering, and professors who were CE's first and surveyors as afterthought became the teachers of surveying to new surveyors.
CEs are naturally very comfortable with numerical data and math. Almost all of them also have a natural aversion to law and to considering how real people (a completely separate demographic from CEs) might behave when establishing, describing, and agreeing upon actual boundaries. They have difficulty understanding that a boundary made physical is considered to be better evidence than the numerical data and expressions used to describe the boundary.
Most surveyors chose or fell into surveying because of a certain level of comfort using numerical data and may have fell into civil engineering but for a love of the outdoors, the opportunity to play with cool tech toys, and because the idea of spending 40 hours a week stuck in an office with all those CE eggheads was something to consider whether it could be endured for a full career rather than something to get excited about.
Numbers people who are taught by numbers people with an aversion to the non-numerical aspects of surveying, and the egos to think that if they don't understand a thing, it doesn't need to be understood, will naturally think that the practice of surveying is all about measuring and working with numbers.
I started my college career when many of the survey instructors were still CEs. Now we have ABET. Many of the CEs have grudgingly let go of surveying, to an extent. Most CE degree programs have one very basic survey class or none at all. Most survey instructors are no longer licensed CEs. But ABET is still very much an engineering accrediting program that still tries to keep surveying under the engineering umbrella. Among their requirements is that a certain number of the faculty must have advanced degrees. Missing from their requirements is any minimum amount of experience in the subjects taught or a requirement that they be licensed in the discipline they teach.
Most college professors now have some manner of surveying degree and a related MS and/or PhD. Most are heavy on education that has prepared them to work with and manipulate numerical data, but are very light on practical application, particularly in something as seemingly mundane as boundary surveying.
For the most part, they simply don't understand the legal side or the human side of locating boundaries but understand numbers and mathematical processes very well. They teach what they know, misinterpret and misteach a few other principles that they find in common text books, and never question they're own limited understanding of the subject. Thereby turning out another generation of miseducated surveyors who will hopefully someday find that they need to reeducate themselves on certain practical applications, particularly in boundary, and then follow through and do so.
Many surveyors on this forum have done and continue to do just that.
Sorry for the long post (again), but I own a permanent soapbox on this subject that I carry around with me.
Bushwhacker, post: 432143, member: 10727 wrote: and there are numerous cases of law that agree with that methodology.
I'm going to give you the challenge that was given to me by a very knowledgeable surveyor when I first started participating on the old POB forum and stated nearly the exact same thing you are here. I didn't get any explanation to go with it, just a "put up or shut up". I'm trying not to be that rude, but the challenge remains the same.
Prove it. If you are up for the challenge, find the cases that say Brian is wrong and share them with us.
If you find that you're correct, fine, show us. If you find that you can't back up that statement but continue your research, even better. That's how many of us learn.
Aliquot, the challenge goes out to you too. Good luck guys.
Chapter 6 contains a wealth of information to study, I think this subject and post is a great one for this board.
One thing to consider, the PLSS was surveyed mostly from the mid to late 19th century, patents to those lands have been held since. How exactly were the patentees able to mark their land on the ground?
The government surveyors weren't going to go back out and split up the sections into the patented layout. There weren't army's of private surveyors, the county surveyors didn't have time, there weren't licensed surveyors standing around (there wasn't such a thing anyway), often the rancher or farmer laid out two 1/4 mile rolls of barbed wire from a found 1/4 using a compass and set the C1/4 point that way. Three men with rods can run a straight line and unlike today a mile was nothing to these settlers and they could run line between the N-S1/4's and the E-W1/4's and get very close. They could measure 1/2 a mile from two found 1/4 and set the C1/4 that way. None of these are "buy the book" but how in the heck did they get so close, they weren't dummies or without knowledge, so much of the lands in the PLSS are split up very close to the "perfect" math solution. Once established with whatever method that point becomes the C1/4, if modern surveyors can let go of their prejudice and stop clutching to meaningless numbers and math they can serve the public much better.
That being said,,,,,sometimes a fence is just a fence......
I can't look at the exact situation presented by the OP without being there, but he is asking a couple of great questions and thinking about his responsibilities and that's great.
Clear as mud when surveyors from 50 different states and beyond discuss the grey areas of boundary law. A fence corner in the vicinity of the C-1/4. Is it to be accepted as the true C-1/4 for all owners in section, perhaps many of those whose lands are based on reference to aliquot parts "according to the official plat..." ??
Or is it simply evidence of an implied or express agreement between only those immediately adjacent owners? As such is it a question of location or title?
Or was it set by either a diligent or shortcut effort to locate the aliquot division lines of the entire section?
I have several more "or" questions, but, since I'm just a CE, what do I know? Apparently according some, we CE's aren't capable of understanding the nuances of boundary law.
Sorry. Didn't mean to make anyone pout. I was generalizing. I know of several CEs who were or are excellent surveyors. But I've worked with and known of many more who were awful surveyors, or at least awful when it comes to boundary, because they viewed it the same as an engineering problem rather than an investigatory and legal problem with mathematical application.
This particular issue is going to have pretty consistent treatment in all PLSS states. With some facts put into terms to reflect a similar issue involving M&B descriptions, it will receive similar treatment in many colonial states.
All those "or" questions are within the scope of our responsibility to recognize whether evidence seems to indicate one conclusion "or" the other. That's where most CEs tend to lose sight of what the boundary surveyor does, because to answer those, you are getting away from the math & measurement aspects.
You can realize and take comfort that you are not among the majority of CEs that can't or won't make that mental shift, you can recognize that perhaps you are in the majority and determine to learn how to make that shift, or you can be offended and pout.
I was a surveyor, largely trained by CEs and overeducated but under experienced survey instructors (with a couple of exceptions) that was once very much in the group that looked at boundary as a very simple engineering type problem, got challenged which prompted me into the second group (questioning what I thought I knew), and now half in fun and half serious, I go around inadvertently offending people still in that first group.
If you're performing boundary surveys, I hope you are one who is able to readily make the mental shift from engineer to investigator with an eye toward the law, or at least in the group that is willing to re-examine what you think you know in light of differing opinions and info shown to you. But in the end, whether you are already very knowledgeable in this area, ready to learn what you might not properly understand, or whether you want to be offended should make more difference to you than it does to me.
Most, but not all, sections were patented one quarter section at a time. Those that weren't the standard four quarter sections were a subset of aliquot parts. For example, my great great grandfather ended up with the south half of the southwest quarter and the west half of the southeast quarter because earlier arrivals had already claimed something like the north half of the southwest quarter and the south half of the northwest quarter. It all goes back to the earliest arrivals doing their absolute best to establish their boundaries without a supply of surveyors to do it for them. They had no one else with training available to do it. The manual's job was done at that point if the entire section was patented land. The section was split. End of story.
Thus, any split after the initial split was dependent on the shape of that original split. Again, good faith efforts made long before the world we live in today. Those are the boundary lines that control our work today. They probably don't match perfect mathematics, but that's not a problem. Or, it's not a problem unless someone wants to make it a problem.
eapls2708, post: 432367, member: 589 wrote: Sorry. Didn't mean to make anyone pout.
...whether you want to be offended should make more difference to you than it does to me.
Am neither offended nor pouting. To the contrary I was simply trying to make light of your ... how do I say this tactfully... confident demeanor when speaking of absolutes.
I view problems such as this from a different perspective than I was originally taught to do. Boundary Location in some text books beginning in the early 1960s was improperly converted by non-Lawyer Surveyors into questions of law. Boundary Location is a question of fact and has been for hundreds of years. Treating these questions properly really clears up a lot of the confusion and problems caused by incorrect analysis. In addition, legal entities are not mathematical entities. A straight line in legal contemplation is not necessarily precisely straight, mathematically. We have thought that since the line is not perfectly straight mathematically then there is a conflict which creates a title issue; this should not be the case.
It was really helpful to read pre-1820 boundary location case law. This really brings the system as the founders of the PLSS knew it into focus and puts what they were doing in context. Most of the case law prior to 1820 focused on where the boundary is located and how long had it been there. The Courts at that time, somewhat more so than in modern times but not much, had little patience with owners "pretensions" of a different location for their boundary. The purpose of the PLSS was to create a system in which it is simple to generally locate a given description. Sections were located so the Patentee could navigate there by Section, Township, Range. The precise details of the boundary location of a given quarter-quarter was left to the local population, this not really being a Federal concern, in theory at least. I doubt Jefferson and others really thought we would still be refining the positions of 1/16th corners 200 years later because that was foreign to their concept of boundary law as it was enforced then.
I agree that whether a four-way fence corner near the center quarter section corner is the established center quarter can be a fuzzy question. That is because it is a question of fact and questions of fact tend to be that way. It is not difficult to find out the elements of any given rule of law but whether the evidence meets the required elements can be much more fuzzy. Our 1994 Bryant case is like that; most of the discussion is over whether a fence with nothing to support it other than long existence can properly be used to infer the existence of an agreement; this is more of a fact question than a legal question. The legal question is easy, if the agreement exists (and the other two elements are met) then the boundary is located per the agreement no matter how stupid the losing party was to make such an agreement. The Courts don't concern themselves with people who make bad agreements as long as it can be proven they actually did make the agreement.
I'm not a PLSS surveyor, but why don't you guys get down to some specifics here instead of this boring LS v. CE discussion or this simplistic, math v. fence stuff. How do you determine that a fence intersection is the center of section? dating fences? Interviewing landowners and previous landowners (aren't any that would have been around during original conveyance dead by now)? What are the methods?
clearcut, post: 432382, member: 297 wrote: Am neither offended nor pouting. To the contrary I was simply trying to make light of your ... how do I say this tactfully... confident demeanor when speaking of absolutes.
Not absolutes. Generalities. I've encountered so many engineers who consider themselves far intellectually superior to surveyors and aren't shy about letting surveyors know it, much less exhibit the tact to afford respect from one professional to another, that I enjoy throwing a barb the other way once in a while, especially when there is a lot of truth behind the barb.
Again, a generality, not an absolute.
roger_LS, post: 432396, member: 11550 wrote: I'm not a PLSS surveyor, but why don't you guys get down to some specifics here instead of this boring LS v. CE discussion or this simplistic, math v. fence stuff. How do you determine that a fence intersection is the center of section? dating fences? Interviewing landowners and previous landowners (aren't any that would have been around during original conveyance dead by now)? What are the methods?
Sorry to have bored you, but there are other threads on the forum that you might find more entertaining.
If you've been paying attention, it's not just math vs. fence. It's all the evidence you can find vs. not going much beyond a math & measurement analysis.
All of the things you guessed at are part of the info you should try to collect. Try to find out as much about the fence as you can, any way you can. It may be dating the patent date of the wire, finding out what knowledge the landowners (and past landowners if you can find them) have. The people still alive may not have direct knowledge, but if the land has been in the same family for many years, the living may have indirect knowledge through family history and photos. If the fence predates any of the landowners, but some of them have been around a long time and have no reason to believe that the fences were not placed to be on the lines, that may be adequate in some cases where the evidence is very light or where other evidence may support the fence locations.
Unless the fence is called as a boundary monument, the fence is not the boundary. This often gets lost in these discussions. But in many cases, the fence may be the best evidence of the original on-the-ground establishment of the boundary. If that is the case, then the true boundary remains at the fence location even if the fence is removed as long as there remains evidence to reliably re-establish the position of the removed fence.
Each case is different, so we can only get so specific. Generally, you should presume that if a boundary has existed for some time, that somewhere along the way, the owners of one or both parcels have most likely caused it to be established on the ground, or took it upon themselves to do so. As HC pointed out, in the early days, entrymen often had no licensed surveyors around to hire and the county surveyor had no time to get to all the newly patented properties, so the entrymen had to take it upon themselves to establish their own boundaries. If they made a good faith attempt to place them according to the controlling monuments in the area, then it was a valid establishment and fixed those lines on the ground.
If the evidence you find suggests that the fence was placed at convenient locations somewhere in the general vicinity of the boundary but for the primary purpose of restricting the movement of livestock, then the fence is of no value as boundary evidence.
Our job as boundary surveyors is to determine 1st if the boundary was ever established on the ground, thereby fixing its physical location, and then 2nd, to determine where those fixed locations are. How we investigate that, and how much effort it takes depends on the past and present circumstances both on the ground and in the title history.