USFS Section Board/Location Signs (and posts)

I do local history research here in Central Oregon with 3 other guys who I met as a volunteer at the museum. We call our rag-tag group the History DeFectives. We mainly entertain ourselves researching homesteads, wagon road, cowboys and Indians, logging, that sort of out-doorsy stuff.

One of our DeFectives found some old, yellow-painted 4x4  posts along China Hat Road southeast of Bend and asked what the hey they were. I’d never seen these posts along roads before but knew what they were:

 I explained to him that on USFS roads they used to post wooden finger-board style signs wherever the roads crossed a section line. They’d be nailed to a tree or on a wooden sign post. They were everywhere along major haul roads and spurs. They identified what sections crossed the road and note the approximate distance and cardinal bearing to the section corner. Firefighters, timber cruisers, loggers and of course surveyors used these to help nail down where in the forest they were when hunting down a fire, logging unit, etc.

I have heard them called “finger boards”, “section boards” and “location boards”. I’m not sure what the official USFS name was for them.

I sent him the photo of one of the section boards along with an annotated version of how to read them:

For the posts that he found I don’t think he realized the the photos were geo-tagged. I was able to bring them into Google Earth and they fit pretty darn well with the PLSS stuff. I look forward to going out to see if the posts have distances and bearings somewhere on them to the nearby corners:

Post 20-14-06&07

Post 20-14-19&30

Both posts

If any of y'all have more background on these signs posts (when they came into use, who made and set them, etc.) me and the DeFectives would be much obliged.