MSchwiebert

Thanks everyone! I had forgotten about the USGS markers as compared to the USCGS markers. In any event I did get this reply from the NGS. I can find no record of this mark. Using the Lat and Long of the church in the map provided as the center, I have checked both published and destroyed marks and there are no marks closer than 1.7 miles to that location. Checking the whole county I see no published nor unpublished marks with TT or TWC in the name, nor any marks set in 1959. It appears that this mark was never submitted to our database. If there is a record of it at the State or County level I do not have access to that information. I am curious as well now, the mark looks in good shape and has the U.S. Geological Survey mark on it, and anything in the USGS database should be in ours as well. I will reach out to the USGS and see if there is any information there. If they respond I'll forward the information to you.

I ran across this marker yesterday near the small village of Delaware Bend Ohio yesterday. It is not in the Data explorer. Any help in getting additional information on this is greatly appreciated!

I agree 100% on NGS data explorer being clunky. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this!

Awesome! that explains quite a bit!

Thanks! It does make one wonder. The photos are all the entries from 1943 from Hancock County Ohio (Findlay is the county seat) and as can be seen, there was quite a bit of activity in 1943 there as well. Of interest to me at least is the traverse stations Black (KZ2107), Black A (KZ2112), Black B (KZ2118), Black C (KZ2114), Black D (KZ2115) & Black E (KZ2113). From what I understand the traverse method is a little different than triangulation, but yielded similar results. It's the first time I've ran across that, but I haven't looked at things much outside of NW Ohio/NE Indiana/Southern Michigan either.

Continuing on a bit from my question regarding the Delta (Ohio) East Base (MC1516) and West Base (MC1521), I noticed that they were set in 1943. Didn't think much about it, but then I noticed that the Colton (Ohio) station (MC1496) was also set in 1943. So I thought I'd do a search/sort run by the counties that are adjacent to the Delta & Colton stations and pick all the ones that were set in 1943, and was a bit surprised at the amount of activity - all triangulation station related mind you, that took place in Northwest Ohio in 1943 - especially considering the war was still ongoing which surely impacted the availability of manpower and material. With that in mind, was there a "push" to get a specific project done, war or not - or was it just normal activity and the service was able to get the materials and manpower to get the work done? Photo is of the above ground portion of the Colton Station. It's in the middle of a driveway, and when I stopped by, the homeowner was doing some work on his truck, and after I asked if I could take pictures of it, he said "I had thought about tearing it out of my driveway, but I guess I'm not supposed to do that - and I guess there's another one under it anyways"

Will do going forward, no intent on being secretive - still learning what is expected information wise :-) Thanks!

Thanks! I did see that there's a Delta East Base station after I posted this. Makes more sense now. Generally speaking, which direction would they work off the Baseline from? Also makes sense that its along a (now abandoned) railroad right of way, as the Oak Openings preserve is between them.

A little curious about this mark that I photographed earlier today, yes it's near Delta Ohio - but South and not west, so this leads me to believe that it's name refers to its purpose more so than it's location. If that is the case, what would it have been the base of?

Thanks everyone! I kind of figured that it'd be easier to drive/set a section of pipe - but hadn't thought about it being less stable than concrete.

In my area (NW Ohio) it seems markers placed in the 1930's used discs, but early 20th century placements used pipe cap markers like in the photo. Was there a preference to using these for one type of a mark over another, or was it just a change to the discs over time?

The photo is from a portion of the Hamler (OH) quadrangle that I have. My copy was photo revised in 1973 so I'd suspect that it's not current. Notice the "733" BM called out. This one does not have a data sheet in the current NGS explorer. Is there a way to tell when/why it "fell out" of the database of data sheets? I'd guess it was destroyed at some point between 1973 and 2006 (I printed out copies of the Datasheets available then for Henry Co.) but would like to know to be sure.

Thanks so much for the additional info! I do have a bit more optimism now. Now I just need to make another trip out there :-)

Thanks everyone for the additional input! Here's a little additional detail. The image is a screen grab from the Data Explorer with the markers in question. This is in Northwest Ohio (Henry County) and the PID#'s are (from Left to Right) MD0156, MD0157, MD0158, MD0159 & MD0160. When the markers were placed (1934 for MD0156,MD0158 & MD0160 & 1963 for MD0157 & MD0159) the adjacent rail line was a Wabash RR secondary line that ran from Fort Wayne to Toledo. (Today it's the Napoleon, Defiance & Western RR Where things start to get interesting is that the original mileposts referenced (wood with mileage to Toledo on one side, Mileage to St. Louis on the other) were replaced some time after last recovery in 1963, for those placed in 1934 and after the others were placed. What I don't know yet is if they were simply replaced, or if there was any "adjustment" to get rid of "short miles". (I didn't have my GPS with me the day I went poking around to try to find them). Add to it that it has been 55 years and the rail line and adjacent property wasn't maintained the best (this you tube video shows some of the route where these markers are) so it's got it's challenges. The good news is that the soil is a sandy mix, so it's not too bad pushing a probe in, but I don't know how well a metal detector would work.

I did find Primary Traverse Station #3 in the datasheets. It's slightly over 30 miles southeast of #6 and located near Pandora Ohio in Putnam County. If the weather is better tomorrow, I might drive down that way and check them out. https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=KZ2123

About an hour west of me there is (or was - it hasn't been recovered since 1963) a marker called "Prim Trav Sta 6" (PID is MD0195 and it's in Paulding County OH), which I'm reading to be "Primary Traverse Station #6" with the number "6" present, I'd guess there's also a 1 through 5? If so, how could I find them using the NGS Data explorer?

I understand, I lived next to an active rail line for 17 years and my older brother was a track inspector for 10.

It is a pretty impressive grouping. I grew up about 15 minutes from there, and I didn't know anything about the test area until a few years ago. I've put together a presentation for the county historical society about it that I'm going to put on in a few weeks for them. Unfortunately the years since the area was last used for testing haven't been kind to a few of them like the two photos show.

When a datasheet states the disc is "mounted in a concrete post" , generally speaking how much bigger is the top of the post than the disc? There are several markers near me that were mounted that way in the 1930's ( usually along railroad tracks) and haven't been recovered since. Unfortunately, many of the location descriptions that were entered at the time the marker was set are also of limited use (distance from a railroad code line pole - which most railroads have removed years ago, or distance from one of the rail heads when the track can be shifted a bit when new ballast is put in, etc.). In other words if the post is only an inch or so larger than the disc - with nothing else to work with, its going to take a "golden bb shot" with a soil probe to find it! I'm hoping that those older marks are like the one in the attached photo that was placed in 1947 where there's at least a fighting chance with the concrete around it.

First off, thanks to all who take care of this site, I have had a long interest in USGS marks, ever since I took a geography class at Ohio University back in the early 1990's that leaned heavily on how to read a USGS quadrangle. Anyways, here in Northwest Ohio we have something that I believe to be unique (but am not 100% sure), that being marks with concrete targets of varying diameters. Almost all were in the McClure photogrammetric test area (most of the markers remain, but the targets have largely been taken out by farming activity in the nearly 50 years since the test area was last used (as far as I know). My question is, were similar things seen elsewhere in the country or are these unique to a couple places in Henry County Ohio? The photos attached are of one south of the small village of Florida Ohio that was installed in 1963 (there is also one other station within this group that has the remnants of a Camera target) to illustrate what I'm talking about. Thanks in advance for all replies!