No way! Set another one...
Around here (recording PLSS State) "pull them out" is frowned upon, although permitted if you file a ROS or corner record showing what you found, where you found it and why you destroyed it. Personally, I have never destroyed a monument or suspected monument, of record or not; rather I note the B&D from the true corner (where I set my monument), description of the monument, record reference if available, and a "not accepted" note. I am humble enough to realize I could be wrong and the two bit rebar may be correct if proven subsequent ???ý, and may control distant boundaries not salient to my survey.
I leave ancient monuments with provenance undisturbed (rocks, for example) call them accepted, and set no new monument. I do not flag up, paint, or otherwise alter an existing monument, except for tagging an accepted rebar with my tag if it has none (State Law). I'll put up a lathe for the benefit of the client, and a few on line if necessary, but that's it. Why; tarting up a monument invites vandalism and other evil deeds by casual observers.
I realize you're operating in a different realm (MO, AR, KS, KY) so custom may dictate "pull them out" as acceptable without noting their positions in the record. Also, I've never seen a corner location like the above example with so many monuments in such a small area; maybe a few several feet to 50 feet distant is typical for the multi-monument/one corner situation. It would take chutzpah to not accept an aged monument only a few tenths from your calculated position in a rural survey. I'll back off from my GPS +- 0.10' uncertainty and say that 1950 survey that placed the monument within a foot of the calculated corner was (and is) pretty damn good work and should be honored.
Edit: Upon recollection I have pulled dozens of substantial monuments when working for the BLM. Spent one summer (1970s) doing a dependent resurvey of a remote partial township in Idaho, setting monuments as we resolved the survey in anticipation because some were located a 5+ mile hike from the roadhead. Over the winter the resurvey was not approved by HQ (egregious errors in procedure) so the following season we got to go out, dig up and haul the pipes back to the truck, deface the BTs, etc. I was not in charge (just a chainman and mule), but it was entirely legal: "It shall be unlawful for any person willfully and knowingly to remove, destroy, injure, or displace any geodetic control monument or property corner monument except under the authority of the agency which originally set the monument."
I really made that comment as a joke (for the most part). I haven't pulled a pin cushion and probably never will but it frustrates me like everyone else here. And if the survey is of public record, I would most certainly not do that. But I have pulled bent pipes, and irons that have been hit to the tune of 60-90 degrees. I have no problem digging them out to where they spin and I can clearly see where they straighten. Just pull, straighten and replace.
However, now as a rhetorical question...If the States grant us the right to set, reject corners, why is it so shamed to mention the idea of pulling pin cushions, particularly when the original monument (or monument of record) is there and can clearly be proven? I would think such an action would fall under the "protection of public" when you can prevent unnecessary litigation, or damages to title, etc.
I suspect in some (many?) of the instances posted there isn't a single right answer for a missing monument.?ÿ
I'm thinking of the several older plats I have tried to run least squares fit on, and found residuals of a half-foot or a foot all over the place. This is just the record, without looking on the ground. Curves are the worst. One subdivision has a curve where the C/L and the lots on both sides calculate out within rounding error.?ÿ And 200 ft away in the next plat the curve data is inconsistent and no 2 parameters let the lot lengths fit within better than a half foot.
So it is easy to see why two surveyors might come up with different locations, and more so if they don't check all the adjoiners.
But not digging to see the nearby older monument, and not accepting one that has been there for years seems poor practice. There theoretically is only one corner there in most cases, and somebody has set it.
I do know of a case where if I were licensed I would set a second mon. One subdivision seems to have relied on a PK nail set in pavement to mark a quarter-section corner that I think was a replacement for one destroyed after lots on the other side of the street were laid out, and the nail doesn't check with the older lots. I would give each subdivision it's own quarter corner, and record those.
Perhaps among the pictures posted there is a similar example, recorded or unrecorded.
Fewer and fewer surveyors are practicing today that, like myself, began their careers with chain and transit surveying.?ÿ Performing a survey in this manner required some techniques that are probably lost now to antiquity.?ÿ One that comes to mind is understanding a line and determining how it was monumented in the field.?ÿ
Another technique that seems lost today is understanding the difference between your current measurements and those made by a previous surveyor.?ÿ Surveys originally measured with a chain require a whole different level of understanding to retrace.?ÿ Simply discounting an existing monument because its proximity doesn't match a calculated location by 0.13' probably ignores most of the chapters in any surveying textbook.?ÿ Placing another monument 0.13' adjacent takes "wrong" to an entirely different level.
But as the plethora of photos indicates, this is becoming the norm.?ÿ The techno-barbarians are winning.
We need to appreciate that a 1:10,000 closure was considered good, which translates into a traverse around a section misclosing by 2 feet. And closures in the 1:2500, 1:5000 range were acceptable.
Before metal detectors, the search included pealing back layers of the surrounding ground area starting with cutting the vegetation growth down to the ground and probing and hoeing as necessary to look for the remains of pine knot, wood stakes and posts, rocks and whatever could have been used to mark the corner in a half chain radius from where the measured point fell.
If you were the only one with a number and a cap, then you are the only one set legally (at least in my state). The other ones were obviously not set by a surveyor, because they are required by law to put their number on their monuments. If the markings are gone, then it is disturbed.
I am not for pulling out old monuments, but I believe that you should never set an additional one unless you could justify removing the others, because that is what you are doing in some sense.
One corner, one monument, make it so.?ÿ
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If you were the only one with a number and a cap, then you are the only one set legally (at least in my state).
... for monuments set after some date.?ÿ
Capping and tagging haven't always been required and states varied in adoption date, some not even requiring it yet.
