Actually Kent
It looks pretty easy. Seems like you really wouldn't have to get out of your car, except to drive pins next to the ones you find. What I'm surprised about is that the land has enough value to warrant a survey; but I guess they probably go pretty quick without all the chopping and all.
Actually Kent
> ...I guess they probably go pretty quick without all the chopping and all.
Okay, so in New Hampshire, surveying is called "chopping"? If someone has chopped a tract once, do you do it again or do you just stick pin flags in the ground by lath marked "approximate corner"?
How accurately do you think you can identify the end of Mound Hill? From that photo it looks somewhat rounded. Is there a sharp edge drop off visible through the telescope?
Actually Kent
> > ...I guess they probably go pretty quick without all the chopping and all.
>
> Okay, so in New Hampshire, surveying is called "chopping"? If someone has chopped a tract once, do you do it again or do you just stick pin flags in the ground by lath marked "approximate corner"?
No need to do it again. Unlike many parts of the country, we actually take the time to MARK the property lines by blazing and painting the trees so the client actually knows where his property line. Just drag the double-wide in and stay away from the blaze line and everything's fine.
> How accurately do you think you can identify the end of Mound Hill?
My expectation is that from any particular station near the corner in question, the feature has a well defined edge as seen in the telescope of the instrument,
Actually Kent
>Unlike many parts of the country, we actually take the time to MARK the property lines by blazing and painting the trees so the client actually knows where his property line.
So, I guess the ownership of axes is restricted to surveyors in New Hampshire? I mean, if just anyone could blaze a tree, why would you need a surveyor?
Actually Kent
Kent your just jealous because we have T-R-E-E-S....of course after today...we might have a few less..
Actually Kent
Good Lord, Joe. I don't know what gave you the idea that there aren't any trees in West Texas. Here is another view of that same "Mound Hill" that the 1883 surveyor took a bearing to, for example. Note the cedar* in the photo.
*if in a taproom frequented by mineral surveyors in Nevada, be certain not to call this member of the genus Juniperus a "cedar".
Actually Kent
In Nevada, that would be a national forest. We're doing a job in Nevada right now where we've staked 20-acre claims on about 6500 acres so far and there's one area that we refer to as "down by the tree".
Uh Perry
I'm not going to get in a pi$$ing contest with you, but I've hack and blazed many miles of property line in East Texas. It's not exclusive to your neck of the woods.
Uh Perry
I'm pretty sure my pictures of the havard oak forest in eastern Andrews County are still on the server somewhere. A thick forest of 70-80 foot oaks. Unfortunately most of the height is in the root system.
Uh Perry
our State Forest boundaries are blazed in some cases.
Once we find the boundary blazes, we paint them red (usually in sets of three vertically oriented). Get on the compass bearing and start finding them chopping our way through the brush as we go.
We're starting a project Monday in the notorious Section 7 (State vs Thompson). The trees aren't blazed so we will blaze them when we are done traversing corner to corner. GPS is useless in 200' tall Redwood stands.
Kent
how do you know where to aim at the hill? The south edge isn't perfectly vertical.
There's a section corner in Sutter Buttes where the Deputy US Surveyor gave a bearing to North Butte but where on North Butte? One bearing isn't too useful. At some distance in chains up the line he gave a bearing to the local sheep rancher's house. There's an old stone foundation about 1/3 mile away but that wouldn't give you a very precise fix.
Um Kent...
Photos like that kinda indicate to me there are a lack of trees in west texas..
I was doing a boundary and topo on a Catholic church years ago....turned the angle to go down a property line and the line went right through the middle of the church...
Priest was watching us...said that is not right...and he went to find some hidden paper work...
And so it went.
BTW...here in St. Louis...one of our long time surveyor's brother was an RC archbishop.
Blazed lines
I used to run across multiple blaze lines along section lines. They are only as good as you trust them.
The forester comes through and blazes a line between cutting corners. The land was logged. 10 years later a government surveyor comes in and finds one original corner and sets the other by proportion. He shakes his head at the forester and paints the old blazes black, then proceeds to blaze and paint the "correct" line. 20 years later a professional surveyor comes in and performs a diligent search and turns up evidence of a few old bearing trees buried in rotten wood. He digs around and finds evidence of the original corner. Shaking his head at the forester and the gov. surveyor, he blacks out the line and marks the "true" section line.
20 years later, everyone is shaking their heads at why the line was ran and blazed so many times in different locations. Just because it is blazed, does not make it correct.
Uh Perry
Dave, you must only be bark blazing? Hopefully not hurting those Redwood trees...I can hear them screaming now...the sticky blood oozing down their massive trunks.
Uh Perry
We cut them down to the wood.
It doesn't seem to hurt them; I've seen blazes as old as 30 years old with no ill effects to the tree.
It can be a real mess if there are multiple blaze lines. This is where it gets silly when people are talking about fifteen hundredths, makes no difference on blazing trees. The adjoining lumber company blazed several miles of boundary, I checked it and they did a good job. No monument more than a foot from where it should be, my answer wouldn't change the blazed line. I might move a line blaze but so what, the tree is still a line tree. Most of the blazes are facing line (e.g. the tree is all on one property).
Kent
> how do you know where to aim at the hill? The south edge isn't perfectly vertical.
It depends a bit upon the surveyor you're following, but usually it is pretty clear when you're looking through the telescope. Neither of those photos was taken from a station on the line to the Mound Hill that the 1883 surveyor would have been oriented to.
When a surveyor gives a bearing call to a peak, usually it is to the high point on the peak as seen from that corner. When the edge of a bluff is used, usually it is the largest near-vertical feature. In the case of Mound Hill, I'd expect that the near-vertical edge of the caprock is what was used by the 1883 surveyor. If there's any doubt, I take bearings to both elements and figure out which was actually used later.
Actually, the church walls are of abobe which in 1883 was plastered with mud and now with cement stucco. The present corner of the wall is probably a stucco thickness further North of where it was in 1883. However, considering that the bearing to the corner of the church was taken at a distance of 0.6 miles, we won't be worrying too much about that detail.
