southpawaz

When I looked at your photos after reading the other thread, my initial thought was the same as jwahl's: that the rock holding the disk appeared that it may have been disturbed and moved. Not conclusive by any means but the monumentation report describes it as being set in an outcrop while your photos show what looks more like an imbedded boulder.

Thanks for the update and photos. You're right, it looks great!

Thanks for sharing that history, George. I see you did some tough climbs for a few of them yourself, including DB1267 GILA, which was one of the supplementary points set and used in 1911 for the survey of this arc. There's a geocache at its location now as well, but none of the cachers who've logged the station as found have posted a photo of the station disk yet. Last year I recovered several of the marks along old US 80 which you used for this project. I'm guessing you weren't able to have the helicopter land on DB0150 WELT.

Briefly, stationing is a system of measurement used for road layout and construction. An arbitrary starting point is designated at the start of the roadway project as the beginning station, and all distances along the roadway centerline are measured from that point. Here in the US 100 foot stationing is used. The number to the left of the + is how many 100 foot stations you are from the beginning station and the number to the right of the + is your distance beyond that full station. So the signs you found are 995*100 + 77.25 or 99577.25 feet from the beginning of the project. Stationing usually runs from west to east on a road in that direction, and south to north on a road in that direction. The 100.00 RT and 100.00 LT indicates distance to the right and left, respectively, perpendicular from the centerline, when you are facing the direction in which the stationing is increasing. I'm not sure but I would guess that the older reference to Survey Station is the something similar.

After AZcachemeister ran short of time to attempt a recovery on DA1425 MOHAWK during his New Year's trip across El Camino del Diablo, we began making plans to team up to try for it together. Our planning intensified when, in the middle of February a new geocache was hidden on the peak by a cacher known in these parts for several hides on top of difficult to reach peaks. We were both excited to see that he included on the cache page a photo of the station, which showed to be the original 1910 disk. Located on the Barry M. Goldwater Range east of Yuma at an elevation of 2767', MOHAWK is at the high point of the Mohawk Mountains, a range runs south from Interstate 8 with a large sand dune running in parallel to the west. Though its elevation isn't nearly as high as most of the other peaks used for this survey, MOHAWK has a prominence of over 2100': The 1910 survey party observed 5 other stations from MOHAWK, from AMERICAN across the California border clockwise around to KOFA, HARQUAHALLA, WHITE TANK and MARICOPA. While portions of the Range are still in use by the military, it is also open for public recreational use by permit. Permits in hand, we set off before dawn with 'cachemeister's wife AZgeckogirl at the wheel of their Cherokee. The route described in the "to reach" (approaching from the east) is no longer easily accessible due to use restrictions, and the two most recent "official" recoveries were "reached by helicopter" by the USGS in 1964 and the AZHD in 1972 which didn't give us any useful information, so we approached from the west along the roads approved for recreational use. As we drove in we began evaluating different routes that had looked feasible on the topo map. As advertised, none looked easy, and we eventually parked the Jeep alongside the road and the three of us started across the two miles of flat between us and the south base of the mountain. As we approached, we saw a ridge that looked like it would get us to the top, 'cachemeister and I bid farewell to his wife and started up. As we climbed we started seeing quite a few Elephant Trees (Bursera microphylla), which are relatively uncommon but on this mountain they were plentiful: As we got closer to the summit, we started encountering quite a bit of Teddy Bear Cholla, which slowed us down for frequent stops to remove their joints from our pants, shoes, and in one case, hand. Once we got within view of the summit, we could see some kind of modern equipment, which appeared when we got there to be a radio relay station of some sort, probably for Border Patrol communications. The last 150 feet involved a bit of tricky hands on climbing, but we made it and quickly found the geocache just a bit off the summit. After taking care of that bit of business, we turned our attention to the main event, and quickly located the station in a small cairn under a rusty tin containing a summit register: Closer inspection revealed the original 1910 flat disk: I'm not quite sure why the 1934 resurvey party would have added that year to the disk, as they didn't do so on either of the other original 1910 disks that have been found thus far (CF0328 CHIRICAHUA and DA1442 TABLE). The recovery note makes no mention of a reset, but perhaps it wasn't standard procedure to note them at the time. We then quickly found both of the 1934 reference marks. here's a view from RM 1 towards the station, which also shows the (solar powered) radio equipment and also some of the nasty cholla. Finally, we turned our attention to and found the original chiseled cross RM. All station marks present and accounted for! After finding everything and taking all our pictures, we rested a bit and snacked while enjoying the views and trying to spot some of the far off stations. Here's a view to the west with the Mohawk Dunes visible: We headed back down and eventually reached the Jeep, having spent about 6 hours to go 6 miles. We decided to finish off the day by driving around the south end of the dunes and head back north along a different road which had a 1962 level line along it. With AZgeckogirl still at the wheel and the two of us hopping in and out every mile, we managed to pick up about 20 marks along the line on the way out, along the way catching a pretty sunset: On way out, I passed the milestone of 1000 marks logged found on gc.com, and I couldn't have done it in better company. Thanks to both of you, it was a great day and I'm looking forward to our next excursion!

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of meeting up with kayakbird and Okie'sKid to look for EU0920 POWELL. Located in Mohave County just east of Lake Havasu City on the Colorado River, Crossman Peak at elevation 5100' towers over Havasu where the lake elevation is about 480'. Here's Okie'sKid's photo of the peak and the London Bridge in town: We set off bright and early, not sure how long our hike would be. After reaching a potential starting point, we evaluated as best we could from afar the condition of the road leading up a wash into the foothills, we decided not to risk anything with only 2WD and kayakbird and I set off on foot about 4.5 air miles from the summit, while Okie'sKid opted to perform base camp duties in the comfort of the local brew pub. As it turned out, the road was in pretty decent shape and we could have shaved a couple miles off the hike but it was a beautiful morning for a walk. We knew there was a maintained road almost to the summit to service a group of radio towers located just off the peak, but a fork in the road gave us two choices and weren't sure which went to the summit, as the road is not mapped, apparently having been built since the USGS topos were last revised. We ended up taking the wrong road, but realized it before it became too much trouble, and bushwhacked our way over a small ridge to get back on the right track. Eventually the road left the wash and started climbing up towards the remains of Sunrise mine, where we saw several open adits cut into the side of the hill. Eventually we reached the towers, then left the road for short walk along a dim trail up to the summit. We found a cairn with a flagpole, and quickly spotted both of the reference marks set by the 1934 resurvey party. Unfortunately, they decided to place RM 2 over top of the original chiseled cross RM, and no sign of it remained visible. Here's the view from RM 2 to the station: After first starting to deconstruct the cairn to look for the mark, we decided before we got too far that maybe we should measure, so we got out the tape and pulled the combined reference mark distance from one to the other around the flagpole. We ended up with some extra slack, which indicated that the station was not actually under the cairn. After a bit of further searching in the indicated location we spotted what looked a drill hole with just a bit of cement residue under a small acacia, which turned out to be just about where the arrow from RM 2 was pointing. After a bit of pruning of the acacia and some cleaning, here's what we found: A bit anticlimactic, but a drill hole's better than finding a building built over the station, right? While we broke for a snack, I pulled out the 1910 triangulation map and we tried to spot some of the other stations that were observed from POWELL. Perhaps because this side run of the triangulation did not end on a measured baseline, quite a few secondary intersection peaks were observed from POWELL, PINE and CHEMEHUEVIS to strengthen the triangulation results. We then turned our attention to the azimuth mark, which was set on a second resurvey in 1948. Its location was obvious as we quickly spotted the described "huge mass of outcropping white bedrock" in the indicated direction, about 1100 feet away on a east ridge. We headed down and upon reaching the indicated spot, we quickly found the mark, along with the 60 year old cairn, just as indicated in the description: Here's the view from the azimuth mark back up to the station: And here's a view from the vicinity of the azimuth mark looking west towards the radio towers and Lake Havasu beyond: It was great to meet kayakbird and Okie'sKid, who was kind enough spring for lunch once we made it back to town. I really enjoyed the hunt and the company. As a bonus, between us we picked enough marks in San Bernardino County the day before and after that it should be red on holograph's maps once the logs are processed.

It looks to me like from the surrounding bench marks that in this case, a C&GS party was running a level line in 1960, happened across the USGS mark and leveled to it as they were going by, either to save themselves setting a monument or as a courtesy to provide and updated elevation to the USGS. Last summer I recovered parts of at least two different USGS level lines in northern AZ that were added to the NGS database in their entirety at the time they were set. In Mohave County, see for example GQ0435 88 DOR as an example and in Apache County an example is ER0592 100 BKC.

Near DV1375 L 477, here's the first Desert Lupine I've seen in bloom this season:

While doing some research just now on a different subject, I came across some photos taken by the 1934 resurvey party of their expedition to KOFA in the NOAA Photo Library. Here's one:

After the disappointment of finding nothing but a reference mark remaining at WHITE TANK, I teamed up with smgsmg a couple weeks later to tackle DW0905 KOFA 2. Located about 20 miles SSE of Quartzite in what is now the Kofa Wildlife Refuge, Signal Peak is a daunting piece of rock, and at elevation 4882' it's the high point of Yuma County. Here's a view of the peak and surrounding hills from the west as you drive in: Signal Peak sits kind of in the middle of the split between the north tier of the arc that ran to Needles and the south tier that went to the San Jacinto Cuyamaca baseline. The original KOFA station was observed to and from POWELL almost directly north, HARQUAHALLA to the northeast, MOHAWK to the southeast, AMERICAN to the southwest, and BUTTE to the west of northwest. Observations were also made to a several supplemental point in the Yuma area including CASTLE DOME PEAK. A well graded road took us in a good bit of the way towards Palm Canyon (location of perhaps the only native Palm habitat in Arizona), and then we veered off northeast on a lesser road towards the mouth of Kofa Queen Canyon at the far left side of the photo, where we parked and set off on foot due to the rough road conditions once it entered the canyon and became a wash road. After three miles in along the wash, we reached the start of our ascent, which followed Indian Canyon back to the east. A short way in, we had our first view of the ascent: Following a steep but well marked trail, we made our way up slowly but steadily, passing alongside Ten Ewe Mountain to the south as we made our way up. Bighorn sheep are regularly seen in the area, but we didn't see any on this trip. Eventually we reached the final ridge line and had an easier walk for the final approach to the summit. Upon reaching the summit, the KOFA 2 station mark and two reference marks were quickly found. Similar to several other stations from this survey, the reference marks were set at different times, with one having been set in 1934 for the original station during a resurvey, and the second set along with the replacement station in 1949. The original KOFA station had been set just a few feet away, but the outcroppings on top of of the peak were fairly brittle and full of fractures, and no sign remained of the drill hole or cement from the setting. For the same reason, I was unable to locate the original station's chiseled cross reference mark, the surface at its general location was just too broken up, as you can see in this shot from RM 2 to the station: Here's a view of the rugged country southeast of the station and the summit register ammo can nearby: After signing the summit register, we headed down the way we came, and as we neared our starting point we took a little side trip to search for the azimuth mark. I had estimated coordinates for it from the description using NG TOPO and found it within 50 feet of my guess. Here's the azimuth mark view to the station: And conveniently, the azimuth mark view to my truck:

If you think the vector method may get close enough given Papa Bear's confirmation that he's used successfully, you can also get couple more data points to average by using Round Top and Mount Lola. JS3905 is ROUND TOP RESET and KS1453 is MOUNT LOLA RESET (now destroyed).

The next day it took me 6 hours to log the one, though (I'm not big on logging finds on intersection peaks without climbing them). I think the lettering was raised originally. This side was actually the least well preserved, but the only one that would photograph well due to the low morning sun. If any SoCal folks get out that way before I get back down that way, after these are added and counted, about 10 more NGS logs will turn Imperial County red on holograph's map.

I found this definition of the Yolo Base datum, which may be useful to you: Standard (California) Astronomical Datum 1885 : The horizontal-control datum which is defined by the following coordinates of the origin and by the azimuth (clockwise from South) of triangulation station Mt Diablo, on the Clarke spheroid of 1866; the origin is at triangulation station Mt Helena: longitude of origin --- 122o 38' 01 410" W latitude of origin --- 38o 40' 04 260" N azimuth from origin to Mt Diablo 324o 01' 31 04" The name is taken from the so called old registers of the Division of Geodesy It is identical with the Yolo base datum used in the report on the California-Nevada boundary line source: Ole Miss Glossary of the Mapping Sciences I may have some thoughts later, but right now my head hurts...

I had a really good day last weekend. I headed down early for the awesome annual Yuma Event #7 and spent Friday doing my first "car-marking" run of the year. I spent most of the day hunting the level line along old US 80, now the frontage road along Interstate 8, between Yuma and Holtville. The original C&GS level line was run in 1927, and additional marks were set in 1941. Some of those were reset in 1967 and 1968 to move them out of harm's way from the construction of the Interstate. Yet more additional marks were set in 1971, and still more in 1981. I was also able to pick up some conveniently located roadside triangulation stations and additional bench marks set by Imperial County. With such a dense concentration of marks (aided by separate PIDs for reference marks on the triangulation stations), I was able to log almost 50 finds in about 6 hours of hunting. Probably the highlight of the day was crossing over to the south side of the highway to peek through the fence (with the consent of a Border Patrol Agent stationed nearby) at DB1383 BOUNDARY MON 211 MX US, the first one of those that I had seen: Here's a detail of the plaque: One somewhat unusual pair of finds was on both DB0363 V 613 and DB0362 V 613 RESET, apparently set with the expectation of destruction by interstate construction that never occurred. I ended the day driving back across Yuma and then northeast to set up camp and watch the sun set on DW0916 CASTLE DOME PEAK, my goal for the next day: Saturday night I returned to the California side and was able to pick up about a dozen more marks Sunday morning as I headed back to town for the event. One cool thing from the morning was seeing this old 4x4 witness post with raised lettering at DB0079 J 614 RESET, I don't recall seeing one like it before (look familiar, fossillady?).

Are you talking about something like this, where a triangulation station's reference marks have separate PIDs with scaled coordinates: DB0369 JUNCTION, DB0368 JUNCTION RM 1 and DB0370 JUNCTION RM 2?

If you all get a firm date, let me know and I'll see if I can get up there to team up with you. Havasu gets pretty crazy around the middle of March.

I found this older style Corp of Engineers Disk yesterday, haven't seen one before. A bit different style than the one shown on the Gnomonclature site, this one has separate spaces for stamping name and elevation, as well as the "Fort Sam Houston Texas". Looks like the C&GS crew may have run out of tri station disks and borrowed a few, both reference mark disks and the azimuth mark are standard C&GS. CG1114 MONTANA

My guess is that it's just east of GC57 Geocache.

Interesting mark southpawaz. It is monumented by the USGS but stamped USC&GS. Maybe USGS set it but USC&GS claimed it later the same year, or?? It looks to me like the USGS set it in 1932 (? hard to read the small date below), then the C&GS "adopted" it in 1934. The reference marks are C&GS disks stamped ESCUDILLA USGS 1934.

The only one I recall having seen is DT0715 ESCUDILLA, a USGS disk monumented in 1932 or 1934:

When my friends Greasepot and Garlic were looking for a long hike to do on Christmas Day, I immediately thought of DV2196 WHITE TANK RESET. Located at the high point of the White Tank Mountains in what is now a Maricopa County Park with an extensive trail system, WHITE TANK RESET gave us the opportunity to get out for a great hike with the trails pretty much to ourselves. The White Tank Mountains are located on what is more or less the western edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area, with what has become a mixture of housing developments amidst still actively farmed agricultural areas. The summit where the station was located is now covered with a large number of radio towers: [Photo: Subman123] Similarly to Harquahala Mountain, the White Tank range has a number of valleys at higher elevation, that at one time served as summer pasture for livestock. Our route took us up the Goat Camp Trail, and along the way we passed by the remains of a large stone corral which we presumed to be the location of the Goat Camp. The original station was marked destroyed and reset in 1975 after it and the original chiseled cross reference mark were knocked out when the area was regraded. The reset station was marked destroyed in 2001, at which time the disk was sheared off but the stem remained. I was hoping to find the stem and the reference mark disks (like others in the series, additional reference marks were added on subsequent resurvey visits). Our hike took us from the valley floor at about 1450' elevation up to the summit at 4018' in just over four miles. We paused for a break, a snack, and a geocache just below the summit, then continued up to look for the station. It turned out to be pretty much a case of "nothing to see here, move along." Since 2001, a new utility building for the radio tower complex has been built at the former location of the station. I quickly located RM 2: But that was all we were able to find, as a quick pull of the tape confirmed that the station was located about 3 feet inside the wall of the new building, right about where Greasepot's shadow hits the wall: The bearing and distance to RM 1 indicate that it was likely inside the building's footprint as well. With a long hike to return, I declined at the time to look for the azimuth mark, which is located approximately .2 miles south of the station on an undeveloped sub-peak, though my guess is that it's still there. As a bonus, shortly after starting our descent off the peak a bobcat dashed across the trail ahead of us, the first time any of us had seen one in the wild. He was gone before we could get a photo.

Thanks for the report on DEMING SOUTH BASE, Geo*Trailblazer 1. Glad to see another one of the flat 1910 disks intact. The survey crew was probably glad to be done with that part of the state. The Deming Base stations were the last of the survey that required the construction of observation towers, as all stations to the west are located on mountain tops. The towers at NORTH BASE and SOUTH BASE were each just over 10 meters high.

After reading the your log and the datasheets for both RD1845 and RD1844, I'm leaning in the other direction, towards calling it a find. Yes, the station was originally intersected at the top of the tower, but then its position was transferred to the ground when the Forest Service set the disk below the center of the tower. The fact that the Forest Service stamped LOT on the disk to me indicates that they were likely intending for the disk to mark the position originally intersected on the tower. So to me, the question is whether the C&GS accepted the disk as an accurate re-marking of the position. The 1940 report on the RD1844 datasheet includes the statement that "NEW LOOKOUT TOWER HAS BEEN CONSTRUCTED ON SUMMIT, AND IN 1937 U.S.F.S. DISK WAS SET UNDER CENTER OF NEW TOWER, CONNECTED TO OLD STATION BY TRAVERSE." which makes it sound to me like the position of the disk was adequately checked and accepted.

Thanks for the photos and recon report on BENEDICT, dixiedawn. That certainly is a large house! If there's no gate across the road or signage, it's certainly within range for me to do on foot.

Though I'm sorry to hear you weren't able to make it, I'd enjoy teaming up with you for that one for sure. Hope the rest of your run was fruitful!