This weeks "find."

Nice work Loyal!

This weeks other "finds"

I had seen some interesting patterns on our 1938 aerial photography recently, so using our RTK we went to investigate a possible ancient E/W Fence line out in the boondocks. We followed a very vague “trace” for about 400 feet before finding our first “stob” (base of broken fence post, still solid in ground), and then found four more at ~100-350 ft. intervals. At 1319.9 feet from the centerline of the Section, we found this well set stone marking the SE 1/16 Corner:

The top of the stone is very weathered, but probably sported an “X” for many years, which was the style of the 19th Century County Surveyors in this area. No other marks were found, but that didn't surprise us. We were NOT really even looking for (or expecting) a Stone here, but it was a very NICE surprise anyway. It marks the Northeast Corner of an 1872 Cash Entry Patent that predates all other patents in the area by at least 26 years, and the GLO completion Survey by 24 years. Now we have to visit the other 1/16 Corners around this Patent, there are patterns there as well!

The only “marked stone” that we found that day, was this one:

The Man, Indian, ET, whatever, is about 3 ft. tall. Probably somewhat older than the 1/16 Stone.

🙂
Loyal

This weeks other "finds"

Sweet find!

Kinda looks like a turtle or some sort of fungi growing....:whistle:

j/k. I found an OLD (75-100 years old? Dunno, but it's old) post a couple of weeks ago that fit's a couple of other later set monuments and occupation well. There isn't a lot of monumentation in this area so it was a nice find.

This weeks other "finds"

> Sweet find!

Wow! That is a good find. It looks like an Indian petroglyph.

All I ever find are capped rebars. You guys are lucky. Very cool, thanks for sharing.

Yep. Our most interesting finds are buggy axles. :-/

And, of course, this...

> All I ever find are capped rebars. You guys are lucky. Very cool, thanks for sharing.

LOL..ain't it the truth!

I found a 1/2" IP this week, per an adjoiners survey. Tied flagging to it and when I was tying the other end to an overhanging branch I darn near pulled it out. It was 4" long! Jacklegs! The corners set by the original surveyor of the subject property (circa 1930) were 6" diameter posts, all but one recovered.

Thanks for sharing Loyal!

Rick

This weeks other "finds"

There is a spring near the above petroglyph, and many other petroglyphs in the general area that we have seen before. This one is the largest "figure" though.

Loyal

1938 aerials

Loyal,

Were the 1938 aerials done by the Bureau of Reclamation? We have a partial set of 1938 aerial for Deschutes County… primarily flown along the Deschutes River and environs by the Bureau of Reclamation.

1938 aerials

Mike,

I believe that they were flown by the Soil Conservation Service. We has several other years as well (all later). There was some serious "dust bowl" (erosion)remediation done in the Tooele Valley back in the mid-late 30s.

We have had them scanned and rectified, and they have been worth their weight in gold these last few years. It's like having a time machine!

Loyal

This weeks other "finds"

That is a nice find and surely much older than your other finds. The only petroglyphs I have ever seen were at Death Valley next to a 4X4 trail in a canyon wall and in the California Valley near the California Valley lot scams and Soda Lake. I would post some pictures of them, but they are on another computer which died on me a couple of weeks ago. I have to pull the hard drives.

This weeks other "finds"

Here's a picture of the old post. It is along a RR ROW and street ROW intersection. It fits both alignments well.

> I wasn't sure what (if anything) we might find, but was expecting (or HOPING for) a 2x2 wood hub, and maybe a guard stake.

In the West Texas desert, I've found pine hubs from the 1940's in very good condition, so it would surprise me if there was no trace left of an much more modern hub, like the one you found, in similar desert conditions with no termites or other wood-attacking insects. In the West Texas desert, there are still the remains of the pine instrument and light stands in place at some triangulation stations that were last occupied in the 1930's.

Wood monuments

I have had pretty good luck with wood monuments here in the Great Basin, although some areas are better than others. Juniper Posts dating to the 1870s & 80s are a relatively common “find” in certain areas, and just about ANY type of wood will survive 75+ years if the cattle don't stomp it into dust, or the periodic range fires don't get it. The [buried] base of even burned off posts are a common recovery as well.

In fact, the BLM was still using wood posts for Section Corners in some areas well into the 1960s.

It all about taking the time, and expending the effort to find ALL of the evidence.

Loyal

Wood monuments

I found some wooden hubs (probably redwood) down in Los Osos (San Luis Obispo Coast). They had been there at least 50 years and were still 95% intact with just a few wormholes.

This is in a very corrosive sandy environment near the beach.

That is where I accidentally found a capped Army monument (old artillery range) for a corner on a Section line 2' from a more recent rebar or pipe set by an R/S that didn't find the Army's monument. The Section corner 500' north is a huge oak tree so I can see the discrepancy resulting from where on the tree you measure; this is from memory. The more recent R/Ss solution fits all of the pattern of occupation out there so I used it.

Wood monuments

A few years ago I returned to a corner in West Texas that I had recovered about 25 years earlier and left a 3/8" x 1-1/2" Southern Yellow Pine lath beside. The flagging had weathered off, but the lath itself was only partially weathered. In Austin's 30-inches-of-rain-per-year climate I would have said it was about a year old, but I know for a fact it was actually about twenty-five.

The hub set in 1940 retained its original shape and could easily be identified as a 2 x 2 nominal size hub.

Wood monuments

you ever traverse in a very rough brushy environment and set a traverse point on a steep hillside.

After kicking around a little you find a very rusty 60d 5' from your brand new shiny traverse nail? I found one that fits the location from a 1972 traverse and still had bits of polka dot flagging on it. Another one the assistant was up ahead setting the next point and he found an old nail, disturbed a little, so he pulled it out and replaced it with a new 12" spike.

Wood monuments

> you ever traverse in a very rough brushy environment and set a traverse point on a steep hillside.

Sure, it isn't uncommon to be able to find traverse nails from the 1940's and 30's in some parts of rural Central Texas. You pretty much have to have the field books from the surveyor who ran the traverse to identify them, but the nails will usually remain if the Caterpillar Company hasn't been rearranging the ground surface.

I can think of one instance where that was a bad thing. A surveyor had run a parallel offset traverse in 1938 using the same courses and distances as the parcel boundary about 10 or 12 ft. distant (if I recall) and leaving 60d nails at the angle points. This was the control traverse from which the pipes on at the parcel corners were set. Each was the same bearing and distance from the traverse point. Fast forward about 34 years and another surveyor arrived, found the nails on the traverse and thought that they marked the boundary! The result was the later surveyor placed the parcel in a location that was about 10 or 12 feet East of where it was originally located! Magic!

Fast forward another 30 years and nearly all of the evidence remains in place, both the 1939 surveyor's marks and the 1972 misadventure's markers!