Follow me here. I've been working on a ridge east of Fort Bragg in Mendocino County, California. It is called 3 Chop Ridge. The reason it is called that is several section lines cross it. The 19th century GLO surveyors cut three chops or hacks in the trees facing the line. These are v-shaped notches cut with an axe and they should be visible from the side, not just looking straight on.
There was a colonial road (now US250) running from Richmond, VA to Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley via Charlottesville known as the Three Notch'd Road or The Three Chopt Road, called that for the same reasons. Trees marking the route were notched with three notches.
Sometimes when we are following previously blazed line in heavy brush and lose it, after searching for the next blazed tree and I find it, being in formerly Spanish California, I yell out, TRACE NACHOS! It's kind of my lame attempt at humorous communication.
One of the early California Deputy Surveyors was a fellow named James Greer McDonald, who surveyed in Texas in the late 1840's and early 1850's and then left for California. In the records of Mr. McDonald's Texas work, he marked bearing trees with three hacks (or "chops"). I've often wondered what surveying practices the Texas surveyors like McDonald and John Coffee Hays brought with them to California that took root there.
> I yell out, TRACE NACHOS!
I've heard of tres leches (cake), but tres nachos sounds like a guaranteed stomach ache.
Jim and Kent...
Some people yell out TRACE [LABIAL PATTERN SCARRING]S! Replace [] with the more vulgar slang expression.
3 hacks are still commonly used in Mendocino County timberland.
