mloser

I am in PA, so we don't have a state advisor. My original post was mostly curiosity about how benchmarks get destroyed, and nobody bothers to report it. After reading your post and talking to our internal engineering staff, few people really care, including those in the industry. There was a post here somewhere saying benchmarks were outdated and would be replaced by GPS, but of course GPS won't give the accuracy needed to survey a plot of land--I can just see a deed stating "+-30 feet due to GPS accuracy". That sort of accuracy could reduce my land ownership by half! Benchmarking is something I just discovered, so I have a whopping 3 finds to my credit. Based on other posts here I plan to inform NGS of my finds/not finds.

When they replace them, do they redescribe them to the UGS if the location changed? Or more realistically, are they SUPPOSED to redescribe them?

I talked to another person in our company and he was aware that it is illegal to remove them but said that if we had land surveyed it would be the surveyor's job to deal with any destroyed, or "to-be-destroyed" benchmarks. I suspect a lot of benchmarks get destroyed when a responsible party is not involved--for instance, when a local building was torn down--someone simply hired a company with a backhoe and a dump truck to do what they do best... end of benchmark. Others mystify me, such as the replacement of a bridge on a state road. Wouldn't SOMEONE from the state have found that benchmark and reported it to NGS? Obviously not, as it is simply marked "not found" in the database. And then there are the ones I simply don't believe are gone, as there has been no modification to the area where they are listed as mounted--how would a benchmark in the middle of BFE, mounted in a rock outcropping on the railroad, have simply disappeared? Once all this dang snow melts I will certainly be out there looking for some of those. It is that sort of "find" that appeals to me most.

No answers yet. Hmmmm I asked an engineer here at work and he didn't seem to really know either, but said they would "reset" them if they could. That doesn't quite answer it for me, as I know there would have to be some NGS forms to fill out, etc., etc., etc., before that could be done. Oddly enough, he was unaware of two (of three) benchmarks located on our company's property! And to add more of a twist, those marks are on a piece of property we were thinking of developing a year ago, and even had plans drawn up for the development. Those plans were only sketches though, so it is quite possible nobody even really walked the property or looked at a USGS map of it.

RACooper, nice idea--putting stuff in a bucket for easy transport. And I hadn't thought of the rolling measure but it is a great idea for some of the longer measurements, and would be so much easier to do when alone.

Open your database in Access, select the table, clear out all the rows, and then chose File Get External Data, Import, chose files of type Excel (XLS) and import it. If the columns have the field names in them your data should be imported into the Access table with no problem. Oh yeah, make a backup copy of the MDB file first, so when you destroy it you have something to go back to.

I looked all over the NGS site but could not find what a person would do if there is a need to remove a benchmark due to construction, etc. There are a number of benchmarks in my area that have been destroyed due to road construction, railroad signal changes, and other things., and I just wondered what action the builder must (or "should") take to make sure the benchmark involved is returned to NGS. I would guess the answer is "nothing" since there are so many benchmarks that have been removed for construction but no note is made in the NGS database.

I found this site last week and despite the snow I insisted on trying to find some benchmarks in my area. My first trip was a failure, but on my second I dragged my poor 14 year old son along and we dug through the snow to successfully find 3 previously unlogged ones. I have been fascinated by benchmarks since I was young and looked for them based on USGS map 'X's, with no success. Hunting them is a lot different with the control sheets! It seems my area in Pennsylvania has a few hunters, including Airnut and Douger.