seventhings

Firefighter Skippy - I'll dig, but only if I am very certain that I have, by either probing with a weeding tool or with a good return on my metal detector, found the mark. That is, I won't dig to find a mark but I'll dig to uncover one once I'm sure I've found it. I won't dig on private residential property or in places, like the courthouse lawn or a public park, where my activities may be overly disruptive. But I'll dig on a highway right-of-way in a heartbeat. Very often, benchmarks are one to six inches below the surface. These are no problem whatsoever - it takes only a few seconds to get to them and digging can be done and cleaned up in less than a minute. Occasionally, marks are more than six inches below the surface. I usually don't look very hard for these - too much trouble. I'll take a look around the area in the hope that a survey crew has uncovered the mark for me but, unless the location is ideal, I won't start a new excavation myself. [i have recovered 6 - 10 buried marks that were serendipitously uncovered by survey crews and the like.] I've dug for several hundred marks (usually in the one to three inch subsurface range), with my deepest recovery at about one foot (on a large triangular "island" formed by the intersection of two secondary highways in rural Delaware - perfect location). Method: Find the location using the description in the datasheet then probe with a weeding tool. If the weeding tool doesn't hit something very solid, get the metal detector out. When I dig, I do take care not to gouge the disk with the shovel, and I won't use much leverage force when digging so as not to disturb the disk's mounting. Will p.s. - I carry a weeding tool, metal detector, garden trowel and a shovel with a long, narrow blade.

With respect to ArtMan's two hypothetical scenarios, above, I concur with ArtMan. While I won't go out of my way to do it, I see nothing wrong with Situation <b>. Will

BDT - Congrats on passing the 500 mark. The "Recovered US Benchmarks" category is an excellent vehicle for documenting no-PID and "in-NGS, not-in-Geocaching" marks. Creating a "datasheet" (in some cases "from scratch") is an interesting exercise. More fun than the typical "Found as described" log. Will

Ditto what Bill93 said, plus: 7. Respect private property, especially residential private property, 8. Be very very cautious about going on to railroad and interstate highway rights-of-way. Aside from the obvious reasons (trains and trucks), no benchmark is worth the hassle of being escorted to a law enforcement facility to explain yourself (not to mention the public safety and law enforcement assets that you divert in the process), and finally, 9. Hold yourself to a very high standard about ensuring that the thing you found is, in fact, the thing that is the benchmark. The current NGS datasheets usually have a lot more detail (and a lot more information that is simply stated) than the Geocaching versions of the datasheet. An NGS datasheet will usually tell you, for example, that you are looking for a: National Ocean Survey, gaging station, disk, stamped 123 4567 X Tidal. If the thing you find does not conform to ALL FOUR of those criteria, thyen you may not have found the thing with the PID. And, really finally, 10. A thorough search ending with DIDN'T FIND IT and some observations in the comments section of the log is just as good as a FOUND IT. Happy hunting, Will p.s. Stay in and around Toms River for another month or so - I've got one more trip through Ocean City (NJ) planned. Thanks., w

Not only does it matter, it is definitely cool! Now, here's the follow-on question: WHO failed to find it in 1974? If the answer is USPSQD, then it's semi-cool. If USGS, DOT or LOCSUR, then it's definitely cool. If it was CGS or NGS, then it's way-cool. And if you ever find a mark that Black Dog Trackers, CallawayMT, ArtMan, mloser or PFF couldn't find, well, that would be off-the-charts cool. Will p.s. If you found one that I couldn't find, I would think it super-cool but it would be, in reality, much much less so. w

lost02 - I see that five other people "FOUND" TU0299 despite the fact that the stamping on the disk they photographed does not match the stamping described on either the Geocaching or current NGS datasheets. That happens. They get a FOUND on their statistics, but you get the respect of those of us who give a hoot about avoiding errors and going about this activity with a measure of integrity (in the sense of doing it correctly). Like most other members of this community, I would much rather find a mark than search for it and fail to find it. But I also would much rather log an accuate NOT FOUND than an erroneous FOUND. The "find" is not the thing, the search is the thing. Kudos to you, lost02. Will

lost02 - Easy, On Geocaching, TU0299 = DIDN'T FIND IT. Comments: There's an interesting mark nearby - 2 9 RESET 1994 - that's in neither the Geocaching nor NGS databases. The RESET mark would be a good candidate as a Waymark in the "Recovered US Benchmarks" sub-category. For NGS, TU0299 = NOT FOUND. Comments: NOT FOUND. THERE IS A MARK NEAR THE DESCRIBED LOCATION THAT IS STAMPED 2 9 RESET 1994, BUT IS NOT DOCUMENTED IN THIS DATABASE. USE WITH CAUTION AS IT'S POSITION RELATIVE TO 2 9 1969 HAS NOT BEEN DOCUMENTED. Will

References - My personal favorite set of references is from HV4250: 1980 THE MARK IS A LEADED DRILL HOLE WITH A PUNCH HOLE SET IN THE CENTER OF A METER WIDE ROCK ON THE SHORE EDGE OF THE POINT ABOUT A METER NORTH OF A DOZEN HARDENED QUITE OLD BAGS OF CEMENT. IT IS 6.2 METERS (20.2 FT) NORTH NORTHWEST OF A 0.76 METER OAK TREE, 7.6 METERS (24.8 FT) EAST NORTHEAST OF A 0.3 METER LOCUST AND APPROXIMATELY 0.8 METERS ABOVE HIGH WATER. Fortunately, the mark's location is defined by adjusted horizontal coordinates and it was a fairly easy find (once I, at my wife's suggestion, looked under the notebook I had rested on the rock). W

Ka-Ching! Interesting thing you found there! I suspect that there is someone at the National park Service who could confirm your theory - that this right-of-way marker is a leftover from an early planned route alternative. But (and just as likely), the original purpose and significance of this marker may be lost to history. Although other members of this forum are much more familiar with early 20th Century marks, my sense is that it is not a pre-1900 mark. It just looks too, well, new. More likely, I think, it dates from the late 1920's or early 1930's when the plans for the GW Parkway (initially proposed as the Mt Vernon Memorial Highway)were finalized and the project got underway. It also appears that the stamping may have different dates of origin. The "MT VERNON MEMORIAL HIGHWAY" part looks pretty old, but the "U.S. RIGHT OF WAY" appears to be newer and much less weathered. I propose an alternative theory: although the disk says it's a highway right-of-way marker (and it may have started out life as such), its present function may be to establish or mark some other boundary. Perhaps it marks the boundary of the NPS' responsibility since the land (or right-of-way) along the modern GW Parkway is, in fact, administered by the NPS as a national park (or something roughly equivalent thereto). Typical modern right-of-way markers are usually within a few hundred feet of the highway but, since the GW Parkway is itself considered to be a park, maybe its right-of-way are the NPS park boundaries. In any event, it's a cool find and the kind of thing that benchmark hunters (as opposed to "normal" people) find interesting. Were I you, I would not be reluctant to disclose the marker's exact location - as interesting as it is, it's not likely to start a stampede of pilgrims. It would be a very cool thing to Waymark. See the "Recovered US Benchmarks" sub-category at: Recovered US Benchmarks Good find, good hunting, Will

holograph - Thanks for the great work. One quick question: are reported recoveries of marks that are in NGS but not in Geocaching included in the NGS total? Thanks again, Will

Jadeskyline - If it's Lewis and Clark commemorative marks you're after, go to BuckBrooke's excellent website here: BuckBrooke's Lewis and Clark site It has everything there is to know about the series of marks. Regards, Will

I would log such marks as NOTE, with comment that I could not search for the mark because it's described location appears to be inaccessible because it's way under water, etc. Were I to submit a recovery report to the NGS, I would report NOT FOUND with comments as to the reason why. W

CallawayMT - Thanks ++ for the info on the Camp Fortunate Lewis and Clark disk - another one to add to my list (and BuckBrooke's site, to be sure). Great photos. Since I plan to recover the L&C disk at Lemhi Pass next Aug/Sep, Camp Fortunate will be a convenient addition to my itinerary. Thanks again. Will p.s. - I assume the road to Lemhi Pass is closed this time of year. w

I suspect that your photo is the mark. But, like Frodo 13, I wouldn't log it as FOUND unless and until I Looked at the disk and confirmed that the stamping on the disk matched the described stamping or designation in the datasheet. I have passed on dozens of marks because they are located on buildings, so I extend my compliments to you for getting as close as you did. Maybe you could get a real tall friend to take several digital photos from a slightly higher angle to capture whatever is stamped on that thing on the roof. I note that you mark has ADJUSTED coordinates. How close is your handheld from the spot where you took the photo? If you are fairly certain that this is your mark but you can't confirm the stamping, perhaps you could log it as a NOTE. See JU2781 Will

I agree with BDT. Typically, the "station" of an intersection station is something like "the center of the top" or the "apex of the roof", and when the structure is razed or re-built the station is destroyed. But LY2515 is atypical. Since the center of the base can be determined with a high degree of accuracy and reliability, it's there and you found it. Good find. Will

jbeale - Welcome to benchmark hunting. There are gozillions of marks that are located all over the place but that have not been documented to the standards required for inclusion in the NGS' database (and the Geocaching database is a snapshot of the NGS' database as of about the year 2000). The NGS database has 736,000 documented marks, but I suspect that there are probably 5,000,000 geodetic and cadastral control points in the US that are not in the database. Undocumented (aka no-PID) marks (disks only) can be informally documented at the Things>Benchmarks>Recovered US Benchmarks sub-category at the Waymarking site. So far, almost 400 no-PID disks have been documented as Waymarks. The thing you found looks very interesting, and probably is used by local authorities or land surveyors for control purposes. But the fact that it's not in the Geocaching database is not surprising: there are lots of similar things out there. If you want to compare your GPS' accuracy against a known point, I suggest you do a radial search on your home coordinates and locate a benchmark that has ADJUSTED horizontal coordinates and that has been recovered by another benchmark hunter. The location of marks with ADJUSTED coordinates is documented to a fraction of an inch. The difference between the actual and documented location for marks with SCALED horizontal coordinates can be several hundred feet. I recommend that you read the "Me First" thread pinned at the top of this section, read the FAQ, and then jump back in here if you have more questions. Good hunting, Will

I use a First Texas Manufacturing Co. "Treasure Tracker" (no model number) with an eight-inch head. My father bought it at Radio Shack about 20 years ago. It has controls for "Sensitivity", "Ground Cancel" and "Discriminate". I have no idea how they work. I center the "Discriminate" and "Ground Cancel" controls and increase the "Sensitivity" control until I just null-out the tone. It will find a survey disk down to about one foot, and the tone is very distinct depending on the metal. I can easily tell a RR spike from soda can, and a length of scrap wire from a brass disk. It is, unfortunately, extremely sensitive to the metal (iron?) content of certain types of gravel. Best of all, it does not give a hoot about Poison Ivy. W

Regarding the USPSQD, as mloser said, there are good one and there are less-than-good ones. The Squadron's members has recovered a great many marks along waterways that I can't even get to (not having a boat, and all.) But they seldon dig for a mark and they seldon update descriptions or to-reach directions in their NGS recovery reports. I have found a great many marks, most just below the surface, that Squadron hunters have reported as not found. While they don't dig to find marks, they don't seem to mis-identify intersection stations as often as some benchmark hunters do. When the Squadron is the only agency to report a mark as not found, I will not revise downward my estimate of the mark's "findability". W

Don't know what it is. But it looks like the bottom half of what was once a small but heavily-reinforced structure. Since the parent station, PIPPIN, is described as being on the edge of a bombing range, I suspect that your strange structure was either an observation post, base for a tower-like observation structure (very common among the old shore batteries along the East Coast), or range control post of some sort. Interesting. Will

The case of the MEROM COLLEGE cupola is typically interesting and frustrating. As Black Dog Trackers once said “You’ve got to be a goll-durned historian to recover an intersection station correctly” (or words to that effect). The cupola was constructed in or before 1885. Sometime before 1935, the building fell into dis-use. In 1947, a geodetic professional from the CGS (NGS) determined that the cupola had been condemned and was to be either destroyed or re-built (destroying its usefulness as a geodetic control point). The CGS person was so thoroughly convinced that the old cupola was about to be rendered non-geodetic that he or she went to the trouble and expense of establishing MEROM COLLEGE 2. Also in 1947, the CGS noted that the original tack in the post was gone because the post had been broken off. Pretty consistent with “condemned and will be torn from the remainder of the building soon.” Today, the cupola is open for tours. How did it get from “condemned” with a broken post, etc. to being safe enough for kids? I suspect that someone did some work on it. So, as it stands now, the cupola either is or is not suitable for geodetic control purposes. Given the history, I doubt that I would recommend that the station be relied on for a surveying job. I’m certain that I could not represent to anyone that the top of the current cupola is in exactly the same position as it was in 1885. But, here’s the kicker: it’s not very important. Very very few surveyors use intersection stations today. I doubt that there are more than about 12 people on earth today who care at all whether the top of the cupola is still a reliable geodetic control point. And all 12 of those people are participants in this forum. There’s me, ArtMan, mloser, 5c, and … well, maybe there are fewer than 12. Since we don’t have rules (we actually do have rules but it’s considered impolite to say so) I can’t tell you how to log this one. But I can tell you how I would log it. For Geocaching I would post a NOTE (which I usually use for inaccessible marks or hopelessly confusing situations) with a comment like: “There’s a cupola in the described location and at or very close to the location of the published coordinates, but the station’s history suggests that the top of the cupola may not be useful for geodetic control purposes. Maybe I found it, maybe I didn’t, maybe it’s destroyed. So, let’s call it a NOTE until it gets re-surveyed.” Were I inclined to report this recovery to the NGS (which I probably wouldn’t – I hate to be unsure about the accuracy or usefulness of my contributions to the official database), I would call it FOUND - POOR with the following explanation: OBSERVED THE SPIRE. THE HISTORY INDICATES THAT THE CURRENT SPIRE IS PROBABLY A REPLACEMENT FOR THE ORIGINAL. USE WITH CAUTION. THE 1980 RECOVERY APPEARS TO APPLY TO STATION MEROM COLLEGE 2, KA1875, AND NOT THIS STATION. I don’t think that I would spend much time or effort trying to determine if the current cupola is the original. Mercifully, I am done rambling. Will

Bill93 is correct - it all depends. I have seen several instances where a whole series of marks (monumented at about the same time) along a road have disappeared en mass due to road upgrade, etc. But the other possibility is there, as well: perhaps the 1983 crew were just going through the motions [drive past - no witness post - drive on, etc]. When I hunt in an area where I have limited time, I tend not to look for many of the "unfindables" (say, monumented along an old highway in 1934 and reported as NOT FOUND by both the USGS and NGS in 1947 and 1956, respectively - those were certainly lost to highway widening, etc). But I do usually make a point of taking a shot at a few unfound marks if their histories aren't so definitively crummy. It is a great thrill to find a mark that the NGS couldn't (I've got two of those). It's even good to find a mark that the USPSQD couldn't find (I have several dozen of those). If a whole bunch of marks are "not found" and there's a good reason that they're "not found", then I might pass on the lot of them. But if there's no good explanation for why they're not found, I might go out a take a look at a few to see if there is an explanation. And remember, it may be better to find a mark than to fail to find it, but failing to find a mark after a decent search is a good thing, too. Nobody wants to go out and accumulate "Not Founds", but the effort does add to the body of knowledge that we have about the existence and condition of the inventory. Will

5 - If you can confirm that the spire is, in fact, the original, that would be a real good recovery. It would eliminate the confusion arising from the NGS' apparent recovery of KA1875 on the datasheet for KA1874 in 1980. Cyclometh - right you are. The "1947" reduces the error, but they still should have reported at KA1875, not KA1874. Will

Looking at both KA1874 and KA1875, I think that this is what happened: In 1947, the CGS determined that the original spire (KA1874) was to be destroyed so they established a new station at KS1875, MEROM 2. Among the elements of its description, MEROM COLLEGE 2 is described as being 18 feet NW of the NW corner of the college. Then, the old spire was demolished and rebuilt. To my way of thinking, this renders KA1874 DESTROYED as it is unlikely that the top of the new spire is in exactly the same position as the top of the old spire. Unfortunately (or, fortunately, if you really like this stuf), in 1980, the NGS reported a recovery of KA1874. They said it was 10 feet more or less NE of the NE corner of Merom Inst(itute ?). I think that this last recovery correctly applies to KA1875 and not KA1874, and, to make matters worse, the report describes the station as being in the wrong direction from the wrong corner of the building. A compound erroneous recovery by the NGS. Which is to say, a Power Squadron quality recovery. Were I to log KA1874 at the Geocaching datasheet, I would log it as a NOTE, with appropriate explanation. Were I to report the recovery to the NGS, I would call it FOUND - POOR with the following explanation: OBSERVED THE SPIRE. THE HISTORY INDICATES THAT THE CURRENT SPIRE IS PROBABLY A REPLACEMENT FOR THE ORIGINAL. USE WITH CAUTION. THE 1980 RECOVERY APPEARS TO APPLY TO STATION MEROM COLLEGE 2, KA1875, AND NOT THIS STATION. Will

Photobuff has disclosed several very excellent items of experience and benchmark hunting wisdom. I do all the things he said (as do most/all of us). I do some other things, as well. I try to "find" the mark before I even leave the house. I print the datasheet and read it very carefully taking note especially of what the mark is, how its monumented (flush, sub-surface, vertically, etc), and what its accessibilty is (road right-of-way, private property, curb, wall, etc.) I usually sketch a simple schematic on the sheet: if the mark is described as being in the southeast angle of the intersection of Smith St and Jones St, for example, I'll check the alignments of Smith and Jones (Microsoft Streets or Google Maps), draw the intersection and "plot" the mark's location with notations as to distances from curbs, street centerlines and utility poles, etc. For marks in rural areas, I'll print a Topozone sheet and "plot" the mark as best I can from the description (NOT using lat/long). Then, I'll load the coordinates into my handheld. The whole idea here is to avoid trying to figure out where the mark is while approaching it in the car. You can't (well, I can't, anyway) analyze a datasheet while navigating, driving safely and trying to find a good place to park. I use the handheld's GOTO function to tell me when to start looking for a place to park. I never (seldom, actually) use the GOTO to find the mark. Finally, when I get out of the car the first thing I do is to get myself oriented to N-S-E-W. Next thing, take a good look around for a witness post or orange ribbon: if you see them, the game should be over in a few seconds. If there's no witness post, I go to where I think the mark is with the datasheet, a tape measure, the handheld (for the compass function) and a weeding-tool probe. If I don't find the mark within about one minute, I get the metal detector out. If I don't find the mark in about three minutes, I step back, survey the situation and re-read the datasheet. If I haven't discovered that I've made some sort of mistake (like, I'm looking north of the utility pole rather than south), I generally pack it in. My overall "find rate" is about 75 percent. My "find rate" for marks that I don't find almost immediately is approximately two percent. I may take three hours to drive to a mark and another 20 minutes walking to it's location and I'll dig for 15 minutes without hesitation (if I'm sure of the mark's location). But only very rarely will I spend more than five or six minutes actually looking for a mark. A note on the "find rate" - about 10 percent of the marks I look for are the "unfindables" - predecessors of RESET marks and marks previously unfound by the NGS and/or professional surveyors. If I excluded them from my list of things to do, my find rate would be higher. Hope this is of some help. Will p.s. - Very very important - also check the current version of the NGS datasheet before starting out. Do NOT use the "view original datasheet" link on the Geocaching datasheet - it's five years old. Go directly to the current NGS datasheet via the NGS site. There's often more info and more current info on the NGS datasheet. For marks with complex descriptions, I'll print the NGS sheet, as well.

I have gotten Deb at NGS to reclassify about 20 intersection as "DESTROYED" with short e-mails and a couple of photos. More often, however, I just submit an NGS recovery report as "Not Found" with comments such as "The is no water tank standing at the described location or at the location of the published coordinates." Will