Stone planted 1860.
Very cool!!!
Got me beat,,,,,,,1892 located last week.?ÿ
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Cool find.?ÿ Is that on a standard parallel?
Reviewed two surveys today by different surveyors on tracts about 15 miles apart.?ÿ A GLO stone from 1865-66 was found in one spot on each survey.?ÿ We had the vast majority of corners being a stake and pits situation so finding original stones is a treat.?ÿ I'm happy for those guys that found them.
We finished a job yesterday that had a stone at the north quarter corner with the top effectively level with the surround area.?ÿ This is one of the rare cases here where there has never been any kind of road running along that section line.
Whenever I see a buried stone that's been recovered, I have to ask: How did you know where to dig??ÿ How big was the search area??ÿ And how deep was it?
PLSS Surveyor: Stone planted 1860, cool.
Colonial Surveyor: Stone planted 1680, cool ????ÿ
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Excellent question.?ÿ We typically involve a backhoe in our searches because if the stone is still there it is under a road and may have been lowered by the county engineer prior to construction.?ÿ In one case, the bucket was set down on a dirt county road and as the fingers drug through the first few inches of soil we heard that wonderful?ÿ "SCRAPE".?ÿ In other cases we have started at our best guess location and excavated an area larger than 20 feet by 20 feet before finding the stone.?ÿ The deepest I recall finding was at a depth of roughly six feet.?ÿ I recall one that fell close to a drainage course.?ÿ Over time it had become exposed more and more.?ÿ By the time I needed it, it was almost fully exposed but surrounded by numerous bars forming a cage-like appearance to prevent it from falling over.
In the rare case, such as the one I mentioned yesterday in another thread, where no road has ever been built, you could stumble over it.?ÿ Had one survey where I was following the work of a surveyor in about 1910 where he set stones at every corner of his survey and we found most of them.?ÿ I had the client drive me to a remote corner in order to have a clue as to how we were going to be able to access it.?ÿ He pointed to a large area of exposed stones and asked how would I know which was the correct stone.?ÿ I pointed to one a couple hundred feet away and said it would look like that one.?ÿ We drove to it, got out, walked over and found the marking on the side and a bar driven on the back side, from our point of view, to hold it upright.?ÿ He was very impressed with me immediately.
There are times when we throw out the math and look at where physical evidence suggest we should find it.?ÿ Usually, that is the correct spot to begin the search.?ÿ We had a lot of fraudulent work done by the government contractors establishing the sections in our area.?ÿ So, believing the field notes is not always a wise decision.
We spent months looking for a "trap stone w/X" a surveyor set to replace the wood post at a section corner. Each search area (about 5) involved cutting all the salal & ferns away with a pulaski, then carefully performing the "archeological" digging?ÿ and sweeping,?ÿ checking all the stones we found (there was about a pickup bed load at each search area. The state was surveying sections to the east of the ones we were doing so established an index error for the surveyor from recovered stones so found the one we were hunting. It was in the middle of the trail we hiked in on, about 0.3' above the ground with a substantial X filed in the top. Our boss let us take the morning off to get to it an celebrate with coffee & donuts.
They misspelled the word "trip".?ÿ You were supposed to trip over it.
Some one in the past had buried it then.?ÿ The 1855 Manual requires that stones be 1/3rd in ground, 2/3 above.?ÿ If not, then a homesteader would never be able to find them in the prairie.?ÿ In undisturbed areas, like the Kansas Flint Hills, we find them routinely laid over on their side.?ÿ As my late father used to say, "You would want to lay down too if you had been standing for 130 years!"
"Never discount anything you find in the right place."?ÿ J.H. Brosemer, KS RLS 82
