Title lines versus ownership lines
The entry man establishing the patent lines (at least in my area) didn't have even the possibility of a government (nor a private) surveyor stopping by and laying out interior section lines. It was up to the entry man to get it established. He may have found a 1/4 corner, compassed out a true direction and pulled a 1/4 mile of fence wire to mark out his patent. Since he marked out his land, and it stays that way undisputed then that becomes the 1/16 line. The official 1/16th line.
The math magical location is irrelevant. It's why facing those situations I never show the math solution, that simply clouds the ownership. Anyone with a surveying background should be able to see the kinked lines and figure out it's not a perfect breakdown without even pulling out a calculator. The courts don't establish these lines, the owners already did and they are the 1/6th lines. It's the surveyor's responsibility to identify them.
However, the interior lines can be "off" but the originally monumented section lines can't (for almost all situations, like everything surveying there are exceptions). Those were established with the original monuments and once fixed can't be changed. Ownership can drift back and forth across the lines, but the lines remain stationary. This gets illustrated with mineral rights, go ahead and claim ownership of a parcel into the next section, but I very much doubt you'll get paid mineral rights to the well pumping on your neighbor.
I'm in my 50th year of surveying. I've never seen an original government corner monument and I've surveyed in every county in this state. You have to deal with the hand you are dealt.
Wow!! I've recovered thousands of them. However, even without the existing monument that doesn't mean the corner is lost. Sounds like you're dealing only with lost or obliterated corners. Probably mostly obliterated ones. A lower level of monument than the existing one, but still way above a lost one.
We have found quite a few original survey monuments over the decades. Probably 50 percent of the ones where we have called on the County to provide a backhoe to search for them in/under the roadbeds. Very few have been visible above ground level as most of our section lines have had road built along them. Center cornerstones set by early surveyors are commonly found in place near a fence post or tree with fence wire going in the four cardinal directions.
Wow!! I’ve recovered thousands of them.
You've recovered thousands of GLO stones? Because I think that's what Norm was talking about.
Yes
90% of the original monuments were posts and mounds set a few years before roads were established on section lines. Prairie fires, roads and plowing did away with them in short order. There are a few county surveyors that left a record of stones set where the post was or from the remaining accessories. That's about as close as we get to original. I'm not referring to stones set by early surveyors. Found hundreds of them. Always thrilled to. But they weren't set by the original government survey. Most are corners of common report. But I've rarely called a corner lost. I consider existing exterior and interior aliquot corner locations of the same quality. The statement the manual makes about boundary marks being honestly established at a time when it was known where the original was could not be any more applicable than in this state.
In my hometown county, I would love to examine the old field books from the 1920's and 30's when roads were being regraded and graveled.
In the 1980's a guy who as a young man worked for the county surveyor wrote a reminiscence in which he described (as near as I remember the quote) "digging up the old stones and putting them where the should be."
I've always wondered if the surveyor was just lowering them and making records of ties or if he was trying to make a "better" grid. The kid probably didn't understand the job, but it's an odd phrase.
That's just an academic question now, of course, after decades of dependence on what he left.
Posts and mounds are unusual finds here also. There were some and they tend to vanish. We are lucky I suppose because the topography normally precludes county roads along a section line. A BLM surveyor once told me he'd almost never encountered pits, I explained that I've seen many, but mostly in a different state full of later surveys.
Kind of reminds me of searching for a 1930 benchmark tablet in an old bridge wing. I was disappointed when I got to the location that there was a newly constructed road bridge. I thought I'd just as well get out and see if there was a reset mark in the new bridge. I was surprised to find the old mark in the new bridge. About that time a county employee drove up and asked me if I was looking for the mark. He proudly told me they saved it. I asked if I could see the preservation notes. He got a strange look on his face. Notes? he said. We just dug it out and put it in the new bridge. I just said thanks for the information and went to visit the county engineer to let him know that exercise was worse than worthless and referred him to the resetting process for future reference.
Most of the county surveyors records that might refer to the original corner are from the 1870's to 1880's. I grew to respect one county surveyor that placed hewn stone marks carved from limestone in the shape of a concrete monument. He carved a triangle shape with a line underneath into the side. That man took his work seriously.
