TillaMurphs

Gary & all, A revisit to this one has been way down in the bucket, not even in the warming oven (much less the back burner) until the current thread encouraged me to extend my winter birding trip in to New Mexico. Hidalgo County Playas kayakbird, You have a great memory! Congrats on following up. USHMT. Hmmmmmm?

topflite, You have discovered the other problem with the Geocaching database. Not only is it outdated, but it also did not capture ALL of the NGS marks that were extant at the time - unfortunately. It is really too bad that Geocaching does not update their benchmark database. However, the consensus around here is that there is zero chance of that ever happening. Some folks log benchmarks that are not in the Geocaching database on Waymarking.com instead.

Hi topflitejr1, The Geocaching database for benchmarks has not been updated in more than a decade. The Geocaching database is made from a very old "snapshot" of the NGS database. Therefore, you won't find any newer marks in it. For example, DO5522 WESTOVER was monumented in 2012 so it is too new to be included in the old Geocaching database. Hope this helps.

Hi Thot, In my experience, that is not too uncommon. Marks that have not had a recorded find since monumentation are some of my favorite to recover. Here are some possible reasons for no recovery reports that I can think of: No one has looked for it No one has been able to find it Someone has found it and used it but did not file a recovery Go get it!

Is that on the Canadian side?

This one? Mark in D.C.

Bump. It bears repeating: Have a Happy Benchmarking Christmas everyone! The TillaMurphs

If memory serves, it seems like we discussed the e-bay sale of discs here in years past and concluded that it was not proper/legal to sell them and that e-bay would pull the listing if alerted?

Yep, I have noticed that feature when searching Oregon and Washington. It seems like it started about the same time as the last major facelift. I just type in the two-letter state abbreviation after the city name and it works fine. What an AWESOME program - it is great.

Good Job Mike! THANK YOU!!!!!! Curiouser and curiouser. Doing a web search for "Geodesic Reference Point" brings up very little and nothing helpful. The way this is stamped (with a number) somewhat implies that there would be more than one of these. But alas nothing shows up in a search. Was 0 degrees pointing north? Any idea if the center was designed to be permanently stationary? – or, was it designed so that you loosened up the bolts and placed a device in the two holes and then rotated the device? (As mloser questioned in his very well thought out and researched post above). Seemingly being such an orphan item maybe it is related to the Naval Observatory. I wonder if Dave Doyle or NGS Surveyor would have any ideas on this?

Hey. That one looks familiar!

Hi Mike. What IS the current version number? I just want to make sure mine is up-to-date. Great program. Thanks

CluelessnLuv or foxtrot_xray, Did either of you make it back? I gotta know what this is.

I wish I could help but I don't know of anything. However, in a semi-related and pretty cool item, I recently read that Google will soon offer Street View of the Galapagos Islands. Instead of placing their 360 degree cameras on cars for the picture taking they have them mounted on people that are crawling around the islands. I envy you for being able to go there. I hope someone else can help you. .

Hi Ruhlandpedia, The station would have been the white light itself. I am assuming that the photo you posted was at the adjusted coordinates in the datasheet? The picture that you posted does not look like a 1944 structure to my uneducated eyes. It also is not what I would call a rectangular "structure” and I do not see any evidence of it being set on driven pilings. Is the structure in your photo 12 feet above the beach? In my opinion, I would not fret about changing your previous logging of this as “destroyed” on geocaching.com but I would NOT submit a “destroyed” report to the NGS without photo evidence of what the structure looked like in 1944 or 1960 or some other evidence that the 1944 era structure was definitely destroyed or replaced. If you had to do it all over again and did not have additional evidence I would say "Write Note" would have been a better way to log this - along with an explanation of what you found. Congratulations on being conscientious about submitting a “destroyed” log. One should only post a “destroyed” log when absolutely certain. A “write note” logging will suffice when evidence of destruction is not concrete. Keep on benchmarking!

Hi Thot, Very good question. When there is a RESET mark it does not automatically mean that there original mark is destroyed. However, in most situations the RESET is established because the original was destroyed or there was an assumption that it would be destroyed soon. So most of the time, but not always, when there is a RESET the original is gone. The original mark might still appear in the database either because no one officially reported the original as destroyed, or there is the rare situation where it might still exist. Are you looking at a current copy of the NGS database or geocaching’s very old archived version? If you tell us which mark you were looking at maybe we can help. Have fun!

Artman - you are good! You should be a detective. Thanks for the article.

Darn. I was hoping for an explanation that involved aliens or Bigfoot. However, it seems to me that Bill93 and jwahl have provided a more likely explanation: anchors for photogrammetric targets. PS - Edrick, thanks for the link.

monkeycat, I just want to take the opportunity to say this again: I LOVE YOUR VIEWER!!!!!! THANKS!

Hmmmm. That is an interesting idea. I never thought much about the “sticks” that were there. The longer one would not seem to be part of the fencing; a surveying use seems likely as there isn’t anything else out here. However, if I was going to use the nails as guy wire supports I would have put them in at an angle and these were perfectly vertical. Thanks for looking into that EdrickV. Where did you find those notes? kunarion, The nails did not have cupped heads. Other than the taper, they looked like they came straight from the hardware store. Thanks for the links. Bill93, Z15 and Azcachemeister – as always, thank you for your input. In hindsight, I wish we had paid more attention to the exact placement of the nails. However, we were on a Benchmarking vacation trip and we had many more marks we wanted to look for that day. As it was, by the time the trip was over we had only made it to about half of the marks we wanted to explore.

This UNK MONUMENTED USGLO happens to be stamped '1940'. MEL Edit: Forgot to ask TillaMurphs if they found any hot water in that area. kayakbird Yep - like kayakbird mentioned the date on the cap is 1940 (below). Kayakbird, we did not run across any hot water there.

We found iron nails firmly stuck in the ground within 40 feet of a GLO cap (MV0327) in the Nevada desert playa. We are very curious as to why these are here??? These were not located in any obviously distinguishable pattern and we found 4 or more. They were mostly on one side of the station (they might have been on the other side as well but we did not cross the fence to look). We wonder if these might have been pounded flush with the ground at one time and then maybe the ground receded. In 1950 the mark was 1 inch above ground and now it is 6 inches above ground – maybe the nails are a similar case? The nails are fairly large and have an uncommon taper (then again, maybe the taper is from corrosion.). Picture below. They might not have anything at all to do with the station but there is nothing much else out here. Who knows? Maybe a rancher was out here repairing the fence corner and his tagalong kid was pounding extra nails in the ground to alleviate boredom? All speculation is appreciated. Heck, if you don’t have any ideas just make something up. I will take whatever I can get. Aliens, Bigfoot, etc. Thanks. Close Up: One is visible in foreground in the circle: Size:

Hi tincanbits, Can you scan the photos and post them? That would make tracking these down a lot easier.

Hmmmm. You have a very good point there. There is not much else around. Hmmmm.