Gene Kooper, post: 435276, member: 9850 wrote: Out of those 11,500 plats, I found slightly less than 30% of the plats had notations (3400 plats). Here are four examples (I retraced the third one):
Okay, you're citing PLACER claims as evidence of major difficulty? As a point of clarification, how many 19th century placer claims are still being worked in Colorado? None?
Kent McMillan, post: 435278, member: 3 wrote: Okay, you're citing PLACER claims as evidence of major difficulty? As a point of clarification, how many 19th century placer claims are still being worked in Colorado? None?
Your level of ignorance about ANYTHING outside of Texas, never fails to amaze me.
Stick to Star*Net and Texas pebble collections.
:zzz:
Kent McMillan, post: 435278, member: 3 wrote: Okay, you're citing PLACER claims as evidence of major difficulty? As a point of clarification, how many 19th century placer claims are still being worked in Colorado? None?
Geezo, Wheezo, Kent. I lob a softball to you by including a couple of placer claims and your reply is to ask if they are still being worked! What does the current land use have to do with the boundaries of patented lands? Or don't you realize they are patented. While the great majority of mining claims in Colorado are lode claims (approx. 43,000), there are only 1700 placer claims. This number does not include placer claims that were conveyed as aliquot parts. Those placers did not require a mineral survey.
I included placer claims as examples because they were originally claimed for their surficial minerals (e.g. placer gold). These are much more akin to your Texas metes and bounds parcels. Placer claims do not overlap other claims like lode claims. Like your metes and bounds surveys, placer claims are intended to have common boundaries with other parcels. That is not always the case, but it is the intent that placer claims do not overlap other mining claims.
There may be another non-surveyor like me on this forum, so:
"Metes and bounds is a system or method of describing land, real property (in contrast to personal property) or real estate.[1] Newer systems include rectangular (government survey), lot and block (recorded plat) and Torrens (used in Hawaii, Colorado, Australia, New Zealand and Canada).[1] The system has been used in England for many centuries, and is still used there in the definition of general boundaries. The system is also used in the Canadian province of Ontario. [2] By custom, it was applied in the original Thirteen Colonies that became the United States, and in many other land jurisdictions based on English common law.[3]
Typically the system uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe the boundaries of a parcel of land. The boundaries are described in a running prose style, working around the parcel in sequence, from a point of beginning, returning to the same point; compare with the oral ritual of beating the bounds. It may include references to other adjoining parcels (and their owners), and it, in turn, could also be referred to in later surveys. At the time the description is compiled, it may have been marked on the ground with permanent monuments placed where there were no suitable natural monuments.
- Metes. The term "metes" refers to a boundary defined by the measurement of each straight run, specified by a distance between the terminal points, and an orientation or direction. A direction may be a simple compass bearing, or a precise orientation determined by accurate survey methods.
- Bounds. The term "bounds" refers to a more general boundary description, such as along a certain watercourse, a stone wall, an adjoining public road way, or an existing building. The system is often used to define larger pieces of property (e.g. farms), and political subdivisions (e.g. town boundaries) where precise definition is not required or would be far too expensive, or previously designated boundaries can be incorporated into the description.
Difficulties
Once such a survey is in place, the corners may have to depend on tradition and long use to establish the line along the boundaries between them. In some areas where land was deeded before 1593 the lengths given predate the changes to the length of the furlong and mile by Queen Elizabeth I. In other places references to the official borders of towns, counties, states and even the U.S. may have changed. Compass directions always have to be tied to a table of annual deflections because magnetic north is constantly changing. The description might refer to landmarks such as the large oak tree which could die, rot and disappear; or be confused with a different tree that had grown over time. Streams might dry up, meander or change course. Man-made features such as roads, walls, markers or stakes used to mark corners and determine the line of the boundaries between corners may have been moved. As these features move, change and disappear over time, when it comes time to re-establish the corners along the line of these boundaries (for sale, subdivision, or building construction) it can become difficult, even impossible, to determine the original location of the corner. In the metes and bounds system, corners, distance, direction, monuments and bounds are always carried back to the original intent regardless of where they are now. Court cases are sometimes required to settle the matter when it is suspected the corner markers may have been moved.
These kinds of problems caused the United States to largely replace this system except in the east. Beginning with the Land Ordinance of 1785, it began a transition to the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) used in the central and western states. The eastern, or original states, continue to use the metes and bounds surveys of their founders."
From Wikip, Richard.
Y'all love getting a rise out of Kent dont'ya.
Gene Kooper, post: 435290, member: 9850 wrote: Geezo, Wheezo, Kent. I lob a softball to you by including a couple of placer claims and your reply is to ask if they are still being worked! What does the current land use have to do with the boundaries of patented lands?
Well, I've assumed that nearly 100% of your work is in connection with mineral extraction, not mortgage surveys of vacation cabins. If you're surveying land for mining, the question stands whether you ever survey played-out placer claims.
Richard Imrie, post: 435295, member: 11256 wrote: Once such a survey is in place, the corners may have to depend on tradition and long use to establish the line along the boundaries between them. In some areas where land was deeded before 1593 the lengths given predate the changes to the length of the furlong and mile by Queen Elizabeth I. In other places references to the official borders of towns, counties, states and even the U.S. may have changed. Compass directions always have to be tied to a table of annual deflections because magnetic north is constantly changing. The description might refer to landmarks such as the large oak tree which could die, rot and disappear; or be confused with a different tree that had grown over time. Streams might dry up, meander or change course. Man-made features such as roads, walls, markers or stakes used to mark corners and determine the line of the boundaries between corners may have been moved. As these features move, change and disappear over time, when it comes time to re-establish the corners along the line of these boundaries (for sale, subdivision, or building construction) it can become difficult, even impossible, to determine the original location of the corner. In the metes and bounds system, corners, distance, direction, monuments and bounds are always carried back to the original intent regardless of where they are now. Court cases are sometimes required to settle the matter when it is suspected the corner markers may have been moved.
These kinds of problems caused the United States to largely replace this system except in the east. Beginning with the Land Ordinance of 1785, it began a transition to the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) used in the central and western states. The eastern, or original states, continue to use the metes and bounds surveys of their founders."
From Wikip, Richard.
I think that I'd write off the Wikipedia entry as possibly pertaining to Britain, but not descriptive of either modern practice or the system of laws within which metes and bounds descriptions are interpreted in the parts of the United States where descriptions by metes and bounds are in regular use. In Texas, all of the public lands were granted by a parade of sovereigns, beginning with the Crown of Spain and continuing with the Republic of Mexico, the Republic of Texas, and the State of Texas. While it is true that some early grants on a largely unsettled land used place names that were evidently well understood at the time which later were subject to question by attorneys litigating ownership of fortunes of oil and gas found under the land, that is not typical.
The difficulties of re-establishing boundaries among 19th-century land grants described by metes and bounds typically arise more commonly from:
(a) the incomplete knowledge or completely mistaken ideas about the relative locations of prior grants upon the ground when locations of subsequent grants attempting to fit the existing pattern of senior rights were made and
(b) the fact that records of many of the early surveys, particularly in the western part of Texas, contain fictitious details of lines that were never run and corners that were never marked,
(c) many gross imperfections in surveying measurements that are not uncommonly found when 19th-century surveys are retraced upon the ground. and
(d) the disappearance of evidence of the footsteps of the original surveyors.
jpb, post: 435274, member: 9284 wrote: http://txls.texas.gov/study-materials
To all us poor PLSS residents, here is a link to some of the sample problems for the Texas exam........................
How did you do on the sample problems?
Kent McMillan, post: 435302, member: 3 wrote: Well, I've assumed that nearly 100% of your work is in connection with mineral extraction, not mortgage surveys of vacation cabins. If you're surveying land for mining, the question stands whether you ever survey played-out placer claims.
No, Kent. I do mineral survey retracements/resurveys for both mining and private clients. None are "mortgage surveys". In fact, I've never done a mortgage survey, what we call an improvement location certificate here in Colorado.
I'll leave mortgage surveys of metes and bounds tracts and their uber complexities to you.
Hack, post: 435301, member: 708 wrote: Y'all love getting a rise out of Kent dont'ya.
And it is so easy! 😉
SPMPLS, post: 435277, member: 11785 wrote: I love this forum. I don't need cable TV when I have the KMBC to read.
I read Kent's part with a smooth, condescending, Texas drawl; it makes it that much better...
RADAR, post: 435360, member: 413 wrote: I read Kent's part with a smooth, condescending, Texas drawl; it makes it that much better...
I had cabbage for supper before I read Kent's diatribe. It's much easier to read while periodically leaning over a bit in the chair and breaking wind...
RADAR, post: 435360, member: 413 wrote: I read Kent's part with a smooth, condescending, Texas drawl; it makes it that much better...
I've always heard it in my mind as sounding somewhat like Foghorn Leghorn:
??As senior rooster ??round here, it??s my duty, and my pleasure, to instruct junior roosters in the ancient art of roostery?
You guys crack me up! I just wish I had the time to read it all :p
Scott Ellis, post: 435306, member: 7154 wrote: How did you do on the sample problems?
If I remember correctly, I got the first one entirely correct. I did get one wrong on the second one, The part about who owned the fee under the road, if I remember correctly. The final one never got completed, it is still laying around on my to get to pile to finish up once the ground freezes up.
