mloser

I think both reports are completely flawed for a simple reason. To me, recovering a tri-station requires a statement about each disk mentioned in the description, so even if I found the station and all reference marks exactly where they were described I would say "Station and all reference marks recovered as described". This shows that I searched for and located, correctly, all of the marks. A report for a tri-station with no text implies to me that either only the station was searched for and found, or that the wrong mark may have been found as the station, which is what happened in your case. See for example KW3078. To make your situation worse, the recoverer described the station as suitable for satellite observations. Since he/she did not recover the actual station, that may or may not be true. In fact, from the description I suspect it is NOT true, as the station is described as being at the edge of the woods. This "false positive", where something that does not exist is described as existing, may result in a survey team showing up at that location ready to use MIDLOTHIAN 2 as a satellite point and discovering they cannot, resulting in lost time and money. Since the RM has no listed NGS PID its exists only as a reference point and not a valid survey point, so it cannot be used for anything but to locate the station.

I have a book somewhere about the bridge and it has a chapter devoted to surveying. Included is a low res map of all the survey points used during the bridge and how they were used. I am sure most were not submitted to the NGS but I think quite a few were. I wish I was there to search for some of them.

Here was a similar situation I found: KW0934 The cover was easy to remove. The mark was just below grade however, not 27 inches down.

I have done a lot of benchmark hunting in that area and have seen all angles of the construction. The hassle is mostly if you want to go up I-81. There have been only minor delays on I-78. On a benchmarking note, both I-81 and I-78 are lined with benchmarks, to the north and east of their junction at least. I have made a good effort at locating the ones from the junction about 40 miles east, but only a feeble attempt to go north on I-81 yet.

It is possible it was painted after, but that would have ruined my posting! At any rate, the witness post was there and the monument sticks 2 feet out of the ground. The telephone poles are cut off but the stubs remain. There was no reason not to find this mark unless you weren't really looking. I was all prepared for a big hunt on this one, parked across a street, got out all my stuff, walked across the street, and saw the witness post and orange monument. I recovered another not found by the same PADT person about a mile away. It was harder than this one (primarily because it required a 100 foot trespass on the railroad, in a cut, so I had to be careful when I did it so I didn't get trapped), but still was visible when I walked up on it as it was getting dark. Yes, PA has some of the worst roads and worst construction in the country. By the way, they are redoing I-81 north of the I-78 split 20 miles east of Harrisburg. In concrete. The job has taken over a year so far. I have no idea when they will be done. My best estimate is... "not soon". Matt

Not good enough Bicknell... I see your "culvert" and raise you "orange paint and witness post". And note who the agency was, which will be an even bigger surprise! KW0837 Matt

You "done good" as my dad always used to say (he knew it was bad English but it was a family joke). You did your research, measured and looked carefully. You are quite possibly right about the seawall. Why anyone would set a benchmark on a boulder used to hold back the sea is beyond me. They would have been better off setting it in a concrete post to the inside of the tracks. I would feel comfortable with a Not Found on this after the work you did. The mark MAY still be there, but if it is finding it would be very difficult and probably not worth the effort, since it could be in a 20 foot length along the tracks and under a lot of ballast/rocks. I would say if you wanted to submit to the NGS you could safely do so after the work you put in, but may want to mention what you found--the rails are welded, there are no poles left, the seawall is covered by ballast. I would say "Mark searched for but not located. May be covered by ballast. Evidence at the area suggest the seawall has been changed or rebuilt. Rails are welded so lengths cannot be determined. Poles removed." Put yourself in a surveyor's position. Do you want a simple "Not found", which could be due to a number of circumstances, not least of which is the recoverer's incompetence, or a description of the location and why the mark was not found? The more you say the easier a future hunter can determine if a re-hunt is worth the effort. I just noticed something... there is a pole behind the concrete box. If that is part of a line of poles it may result in you finding E 18 (don't expect it to be numbered anymore though).

Some of my pics only produced a fuzzy image of the GPS and they were still accepted by Deb. Maybe some of us have gotten a good reputation at NGS for being accurate and only circumstantial evidence is necessary. I am pretty sure Deb believes we knew where we were when we took the pics! The only one she denied was an actual monument, which was leaning at a 30 degree angle. She made me submit it as Poor. I admit to an alterior motive when I attempted to get it marked as destroyed--I wanted the disk! Oh well. Matt

I have to admit, nothing is out of consideration for me. I look for 'em all, from lowly PA DOT disks on bridges to drill holes on the tops of mountains. My favorites are the ones I know are older, such as drill holes, granite monuments (my favorite was BARRY 1885), chiseled anything, etc. And like most of you, the longer since the last recovery, the better! Matt

Artman, I totally understand your fear of heading into the brush because of poison ivy. I have had extreme reactions to it since I was a kid and when I started benchmarking last year rediscovered it after an absence of years. What I have found however is that I am most prone to it in late winter/early spring, when it is semi-dormant and has no leaves. I have yet to be able to easily identify dormant poison ivy, and if you think only the leaves cause problems, think again! I have been to the doctor for steroids twice due to benchmarking poison ivy cases, one in March 2004 and one in April 2005, both from vines with no leaves! Before someone regales me with the fact that I can identify poison ivy by the fuzzy vines, be aware that only the THICKER ones have that telltale fuzz and smaller vines show no sign of being something not to touch. I have no trouble this time of year, as I can identify mature poison ivy from about 50 feet. I will do everything but touch it though, as contact is necessary to get the rash. My tendency is to dig around in a dormant vine looking for a benchmark, then wipe sweat off my face, scratch my eyes, and touch other sensitive areas, making sure I get it all over my body. This leads to cases of poison ivy that swell my eyes shut and generally make me miserable. Those of you who have not gotten poison ivy between fingers will never understand how miserable it can make you feel! My solution? HA! Well, for one thing, twice biitten, third time shy... I now (try to) stay clear of anything vine-like in any season. I have purchsed a large tub of Lava brand wipes to keep in the car, and after touching any plant that I am in any way unsure of, do a complete wipedown of my face, hands and arms. I got Lava brand because they don't have skin softeners in them. Since poison ivy is an oil, such softeners would just help smear it in larger areas and give you a worse rash. My secret weapon is Tecnu, a cleaner that purports to work up to 8 hours after contact with poison ivy. I keep a bottle in the car and one at home and have used both. You can get it at most drugstores for about $7.00 a bottle. The bottle will wash your hands and face about 8-10 times from my experience. Well worth the insurance! After cleaning myself, I wash my clothing BY ITSELF, with a strong soap. People swear by Fels Naptha but I have never reinfected myself after just using good ol Tide or All. Some poison ivy facts: The rash you get is a reaction to an oil called urushiol in the vines and on the leaves. You CANNOT get poison ivy by being near it--you MUST touch it, or have it touch you. People who say "I can get poison ivy by just being near it" are not liars, they just got nearer than they thought! According to some sources, you have between 5 and 15 minutes to clean the area before the oil soaks into your skin and guarantees you a rash. If you do choose to clean the area, keep away from beauty soaps--they will just spread it. Use an alcohol based cleaner followed by soap or a stronger soap without softeners in it. Tecnu, for me at least, seems to defy this. Another product to wash with is called Zanfel. The product claims to actuall REDUCE the severity of an exiting case of poison ivy. I can say that it didn't work for me, and at $30 a pop I wasn't going to give it a second chance. Your results may vary. You CANNOT get poison ivy from someone else, unless they have so much of the oil on them that you get it from that. The oozy stuff that comes out of mature blisters is lymph and is just a body fluid. It is nasty but not contagious. You CAN get poison ivy from your dog or cat, after they have walked through a patch and you pet them or rub your face in their fur. And, although I have never heard exactly what happens to a person in this case, you can get poison ivy from being in smoke from burning plants. The thought of getting poison ivy in my throat or nose totally scares me! Urushiol is present in other everyday things. An oddball example is the black laquer used on older Japanese furniture. I proved this to myself one time. You laugh, but I am a hands on kind of guy. It wasn't a bad case though. Another place is in cashews. Yep, I can eat them without a problem, most of the time. But the word is that if you have a case of poison ivy and eat cashews, the combo makes your rash flare up. This is one I will NOT test, because the thought of being one large rash scares me to death. Poison ivy lives on the edge... you will find it at the edge of a farm field that adjoins woods, beside the road, at the sides of buildings, etc. You will rarely find it in deep woods--it needs more light than that. It is a vine so it wants to climb things, but it can be found carpeting large areas too. I hope this helps some of you. What it all boils down to is: learn to recognize poison ivy and stay away from it! I should take my own advice. Matt

To log intersection stations as destroyed I send pics to Deb showing the location of the missing (or altered) station. In all cases I attempt to include my GPSr in at least one or two pics showing the coordinates and/or the arrow of the GOTO pointing at the non-existant station. Also, I describe what I found, such as "Water tower location is now the the back yard of a house", etc. This has not failed me yet. I have 39 destroyed stations at GC.com, slightly fewer at NGS (ones I KNOW are gone but also KNOW the NGS will not accept my description without physical proof). One example can be seen at: KW3065 Matt

I too take a certain, sad, pleasure in marking stations destroyed. My feeling is that if a mark is actually destroyed it is better to have it out of the database totally and not simply there as a Not Found, or worse, an incorrect Found (see other threads about incorrect water towers, antennas, etc.). As for stations I will never look for... I have to say I can't think of any. There are a couple that I think will be harder than others, but none that I have given up on TRYING to find. I was lucky to find a contact at a local military base and got to complete my search on that property early this spring. There are some on railroad property that I will need some sort of permission to locate, but I feel that sooner or later I will ask for and receive that permission (no, probably NOT official permission, but I have a few contacts who would cover for me if and when I ask). A few are like kc2ixe's "never find" marks as they are along busy highways but none are in the center of the highway, so sooner or later I will find a time to stop and get them--maybe a 6 am foray will have limited traffic. Matt

A bit more on this from a guy who has recovered about 50 marks along railways (some pretty dang active, but I keep my eyes open both for trains and railroad police). First, as you discovered, "rails" are pretty useless from a number of perspectives. First, your railroad, like most operating railroads, has welded rail. Bicknell is correct in his description of rail lengths--33 and 39 feet are very common lengths, so you can use those lengths as calculation points, but can't count on anything. (A little side fact: Welded rail, oddly enough, instead of being rolled as one hugely long rail and used that way, is actually cut into shorter lengths (39 feet rings a bell, but I won't guarantee that) and then welded to make lengths to the railroad's requirements. I am sure there are reasons why they just don't roll 200 foot lengths, but I am not at all aware of them.) Second, you will quite likely find the poles in place. Almost all of the railroad roadbeds I have searched along have had the poles in place. One or two have had them removed and a couple have had them cut down to "stumps", but still visible. Third, you may or may not find the milepost. When I have found a reference to a milepost I have usually found it, but mentions of "fractional" mileposts have never turned anything up. Quite often the milepost will be renumbered, but the original post will remain. Historically these were large cast iron or concrete posts set beside the tracks. They were used both as mile markers and as a way to tell train speed when steam engines didn't have speedometers, so they were very important and treated as such. Fourth, since the concrete box remains you can pace off the distance without serious measurement, as long as the poles remain. Just walk a guessed distance from the box until you are across the tracks from a pole. Don't worry about the number on the pole. While my first guess is that pole E 18 is a commercial power pole and NOT a railroad pole (I don't recall seeing any numbers on railroad poles), a check of aerial photos of the area show no real reason for a commercial power pole in that location, so maybe the GN Railroad DID number theirs. My method would be: research the location using topo maps and aerial photos. The topo map shows the mark a bit northwest of the indicated coords, not rare in scaled marks. Given that info, I would go to the location, use my GPSr to get to the indicatioed coords, then cross the tracks and head north a bit, keeping an eye out for the box and any poles across the tracks. I would be looking for a larger-than-average granite block in the seawall. I am not familiar with seawalls. The location of the mark as being 2 feet below track level means it might be covered by ballast, dirt, sand, or anything, so it may be hard to find. I would measure 10.2 feet from the rail, taking into account that the rails maybe have been moved at some point, so I would not put 100 percent stock in that measurement, but simply use it as a guide to walk along the seawall with my eyes open. If my walkaround method didn't work I might try to measure from the pole, but I am not telling YOU to do that. It is one of two "actual" measurements, however and the place where the two measurements coincide would give you a limited search area. By the way, is there ANY chance this granite block got shifted from wave action? If you find the mark and it is anything but LEVEL, it most likely has been moved in some way and its accuracy would be suspect. I have added a log to the mark with a aerial photo showing where I think the station may be at SY0069 Aerial Photo Matt

Go to maps.google.com and enter the coords of the station: N39 16 54.56990 W077 32 36.48407. By looking at the satellite photo my guess is that if the owner permited it and the day was decently dry, you could drive very near to the woods line. I doubt the woods road is passable though--I have yet to find a "woods road" that remained passable. People must drive into the mountains less than before! I would say there is a near zero possibility that the azimuth mark remains. I projected it on USAPhotomaps and found a likely location that fits the angle and distance, which puts it along state Rt 28 now. However, at 12 feet from the road center, if there is even a small shoulder on Rt 28 the mark has been destroyed. There are two bridges near the proper distance along old Rt 15 and it will be pretty easy to check each of them for the azimuth. My bet is on a wider berm than existed in 1942 and the mark being gone.

I will do some measuring using USAPhotoMaps when I get home, but my interpretation was based only on what I saw on the topo map--go up Barrenger Creek Pike to Rt 464, turn left, then go to the farmhouse road and up it to the farm. After that, either drive or pack across the field into the woods to the mark. I am pretty sure the coords are NOT where the X and 687 are--that is just an elevation. The station is to the southwest, where the coords place it and where it shows up on Geocaching. This station will be set on the highest point of the ridge that is closest to the river. When I say "highest" I mean exactly that--if you stand in the area where you suspect the mark to be and look around, you can often walk right to the mark by finding the crest of the ridge. It won't be NEAR the crest, it will be ON it. This is typical of mountaintop triangulation stations.

Bicknell, I spent some time looking at this station on various sources and think that the 1942 to reach is still valid, if you ignore the route numbers and your knowledge of the area. I just followed the to reach without thinking of road names and ended up following Barrenger Creek Pike to Point of Rocks road to the farm road that I think is Dr. Duvall's old farm from 1865. (Note that the 1865 recovery mentions Dr Duvall's BARS, but I am willing to get it means BARN.) The topo map shows a cleared area around this old farm, which is probably farmed land, or recently farmed land. My method of access would be to ask at the farm and try to drive across the field or at least simply WALK from the farmhouse across the open field to the peak. The rise is about 60 feet, which is much preferable to the 300 you would have to do from either side of the hill. I haven't had a chance to look at aerial photos yet as I am at work but will do so later tonight. You might even engage the farm owner by taking an extra copy of the NGS description and letting them in on some history of their farm. I would love to come find this with you but that would only be possible on Saturday (and even that date is shaky). It would be cool to see a disk in a quartz boulder! Matt

I also think it might be to avoid ice forming in the hole and possibly expanding to split the rock. Although it is unlikely a 3/4 inch drill hole will cause a boulder to cleave, perhaps after 50 to 100 years something might happen.

Here is an article from a Houston paper that mentions our favorite disks. Anyone near Austin want to help recover some marks? Houston Chronicle Article

Brett, I think a lead-filled drill hole is pretty common in your area. Take a look the descriptions of some nearby marks. A few have RMs that have lead filled drill holes with a nail or tack in them. See, for example, MACK. It is possible that your RM was always lead filled and the reporting surveyor simply didn't mention it, or that it was filled a bit later and not reported. Also, even though the mark appears to have been set in 1935 a couple of things lead me to believe you have found something that was done much earlier--probably in the mid to late 1800s. The first is that the mark has "1935" in the name. Usually this indicates a station that was set near or on top of an existing station and replaces it in the NGS database. Second is that your reference marks are drill holes, which is a practice that was mostly used prior to the use of disks, which started somewhere around 1900 from what we on the board have determined (if memory serves me). You MAY be looking at survey work done as early as 1847--WAITE II 1847, a mile or so away, was set in 1847 and not found in 1934. Perhaps some of the other marks were set in that time frame. Matt

Darn that ddnutzy! 2 years and I would have had the record! Sigh. Still, I am pretty darn happy with this find and the time I spent on this mountain was wonderful--it was a beautiful day and I talked to a number of people about all sorts of thing, not the least of which was benchmarks and surveying. I had a few children helping me look, which was great, and gave a few elementary lessons in surveying. Some of the people were fascinated with the fact that there was evidence of people having been there in 1865 and 1892 (the 1892 mark is VERY obvious, as are the reference mark arrows pointing to it). In the end, this is my second favorite recovery (Barry 1885 was my first old mark and will remain my favorite). I spent three hours on a mountain with a beautiful view, visiting history, and talking to some great people (one person even prayed I would find the mark, and oddly enough, the entire thing came together for me about a half hour later. I noted that the 1892 mark referred to the the "Sullivan mark" and it hit me that Sugar Loaf S mean SULLIVAN! And that Sugar Loaf, mentioned in the Sugar Loaf S description as "the station of 1864" was replaced by the station of 1892, exactly where Sugar Loaf 1864 was located. Why on earth Mr Sullivan would bother to set a station 25 feet away on year later is beyond me, but it happened. The bad note of all of this is that the coordinates for this adjusted mark are completly wrong, as they refer to a location west of this mark about 40 feet. Sugar Loaf S is in the box score for Sugar Loaf Reset as being at 286 degrees, which put it on a large rock both Black Dog and I spent time at. I am not sure when this occurred but the survey party responsible was incorrect and found something that didn't exist. This led to my recovery as "poor". Matt

Just find your location in TopoZone. The declination is at the bottom of the page.

I got a similar response from Deb today regarding a benchmark in a concrete monument that has been pushed over until it is leaning at about a 30 degree angle.

I honestly think I would wreck from laughing out of control if I saw that sign.

Dave, What you found is most likely a mark used to register aerial photographs to maps. These are placed so they show up clearly on the photo and can be used to make the photo align with known points on a map. This one appears quite old and worn. New ones are often a reflective material and are wider. And I took a look at PFF's aerial photograph of the base. I had to laugh when I said the name of the base out loud (well, out loud inside my warped little mind).

Deb has consistently accepted pics from me that show my GPS with a GOTO pointer and the missing intersection station. They are pretty easy to prove destroyed as it can be quite obvious they are no longer there. I also have quite a few "destroyeds". Most are intersection stations but I have found about 8 disks destroyed too. Matt