Holy's previous post about skill and luck reminded me about my the first "original stone" monument I found in the course a survey:
About 1974, we were measuring acreage for the Dept. of Mines at a limestone quarry in Drumright, OK. This was some cool stuff because I not only got a lot of windshield time, I also got to take the HP3810A total station...that didn't happen every day.
Actually we shot a lot of fences during those surveys, but if you found corners it was all the better.
I needed a 1/4 corner and had a pencil marked 7.5' quad sheet that indicated the corner (with no fences anywhere near) fell on a steep slope. We had shot some distances and had a faily small (50' r) search area defined.
This was in a limestone quarry..there were loose stones laying all over the side of this slope! Was just about to give up when, with my keen eyes, I noticed a faded lath laying down with rotted flagging. I flipped the lath over and it read "orig. mon."
Sure enough the lath was broke off right next to a rather mundane looking chunk of rock half buried and standing upright. The last guy had colored in the "1/4" with keil on the side and it was still visible.
If it hadn't been for the lath, I would have never seen it.:pinch:
Not a stone but....lucky.
about 30 years ago - out with a new guy on a lot survey and growing a little impatient with "where do I look for the corner" From about 25' away I threw a chaining pin near the corner and had a dead ringer into the top of an old rusted out pipe. I don't know who was more shocked him or me. ps - it did turn out to be the corner !
It wasn't me
and it wasn't a stone BUT. I was working with one of the owners of the company (I was still an Instrument Man) walking a boundary looking for corners. We had found most but he was definitely interested in a particular corner. We had paced from two corners, searched with a dip needle, raked up a lot of leaves and couldn't find anything. He pulled the old plat from his pocket and sat down to look at it one more time. OUCH, he sat directly on a #4 rebar sticking up about an inch. I accused him of "pulling one out of his butt".
Andy
Remember it like it was yesterday! With a little Irish Jig and a "BOO YA" heard for miles down the canyon, you couldn't wipe the smirk off my face for a week!
Set by Herman D. Gradon in 1897!
Steep A** terrain
Beautiful "Little Canyon"
Driving home one day...This is how firemen in ID spend their free time!
(full size rifle in lower-right corner!)
A different kind of stone
A couple of stone finds on one job are probably the most memorable. They weren't GLO stones but property corner stones set in 1910. This is fairly wide open range country with a few fences. Happened to have the client and his wife with me as they were showing me how to get to the far southeast area by vehicle, which wasn't easy. He stopped close to where he thought the corner might fall. He asked what I was searching for and I said "a stone set in 1910". He swings his arm and points out thousands of rocks. I said, "It'll look like that one over there because it should be upright. A few seconds later I declared it was, in fact, the stone we needed. Impressed the client immensely.
A few days later we were back looking for the next stone to the north. Same kind of story. Rocks everywhere but only one that was about 12" x 12" sticking up about 12".
We fell right into it. Nice Stone flush with the ground with a drill hole in 
it.
Here's a nice one. It's a not a stone but an original pin found 1.6' deep
Here's an original Bethlehem Monument. Found 2 of them.
Then there's this cut stone found in the woods somewhere in Cambria County.
I've found so many old stones I can't remember which was the first.
I found a marked stone set in about 1910 at Point Mugu. It wasn't a big deal because it was obvious and found by the 1960s R/S I was retracing.
