BuckBrooke

Ok, I'm game. I'll call dibs on the New Mexico stations. Could you post info on the Santa Fe (good call on the siting), Las Vegas and Cimarron stations? That's a two hour drive out to Cimarron, getting the other two along the way. I've been meaning to get up in that direction for a while.

In NM, several strings of the oldest benchmarks in the state are on Reservation or Pueblo land. Good luck to anyone trying to get those marks. Great job, Papa-Bear.

Bicknell, Properly claimed disks like yours are a fun momento. As to getting the disks out of the monumentsm, I follow someone mloser's advice. Half a dozen to a dozen good sledge hammer blows on the side of monument, up near the top, break the conrete away so that you just have a bit stuck to the 3 in. shaft of the disk.

People have run across several stations like this in the past, where the height was entered with the wrong units. They've been fixed. It is Cheryl's bailiwick.

I've only run across USC&GS disks and some from the NMDOT (or NM Highway Commission, etc. depending upon the decade). The NMDOT is rather cavalier about my reporting destroyed disks; they just want an email when I reported one. It's different for different agencies, so I would suggest that you make a good faith effort at contacting whomever's disk you will list as destroyed.

I got a quad in Albuquerque fairly quickly, but lost interest. There's simply too much work for me to do a quad in a major city, and it takes too long for me to drive out to one that has less buildings. I have time for benchmarking, but it's not the same time commitment, and I have less time now. I would suggest you pick one that's in a fairly low building density area if you can. Some people have completed three to half a dozen quads now, especially some folks that are retired.

Sorry about the delays; my wife and I have bought a house and we're in the midst of moving. I've a list of new agencies picked up through the photo galleries to update; I'll include ya'lls and update soon.

Well, my luck has been 0 on finding any metal detectors at the Radio Shacks that are having sales/going out of business in Albuquerque (3-4). Does anyone have a 2200 or 3300 unit in one of their shops still available, or has one spare they'd be willing to sell?

At a certain point, you get used to the witness posts in your area. Out here, on the highways/roads pink is gas, particular small white ones are NMDOT, faded large white ones are NGS, etc...

Deb, thanks for your help so far. Best wishes for your family's speedy recovery.

Paul, Thanks for the heads-up. I've been busy with buying/repairing our new house, that I haven't had time for benchmarking. I'll zip over to the Shack today to check it out and confirm the nation-wideness of the sale. Buck

I would bet you get the disk muggled in short order. It's a nice souvenir.

I have no idea why they did it that way, but I have the feeling that the US Corps of Engineers used the name "United States Engineer Department" when they were working on civilian projects into the 1950s, at least. In some of the material I've run across there seems that Congress gave money for civilian engineering projects post Revolutionary War, and that the army engineers either hired civilians or split off part of their efforts to handle those specific projects. It seems like that situation was strengthened with the real formation of the Corps in the early 1800s, and that it continued with this "United States Engineer Department" and "Corps of Engineers - War Department" for civil vs. military surveying projects until just after WWII. I guess at that point someone found it silly to have the distinction between the two, which is when the civilian "Districts" were merged into the Corps. Thoughts?

This article seems to make a clear distinction between the Corps and the US Engineer Department in 1944, in Yukon. This Corps of Engineers article seems to imply that as of 1950 the US Engineer Department was the name used for the Corps of Engineers when it was working on civilian projects. Sometime after that the name went away, I suppose.

kc2ixe, I may have missed something in the conversation, or may be repeating something someone else said, but wanted to clarify what I see as your argument. Let's say we have two disks relatively close together (within instrument measuring distance). The disks have adjusted accuracy in a modern datum, take your pick. Now we: A: Measure the distance between the points with an instrument (assuming an error-free measurement system) B: Calculate the distance between the points based on the two disks' coordinates My understanding of your frustration is that the two values will come out different, when you think they should be the same. But, the geodetic B value will always be off, within a certain error based on the datum's model (ever smaller the more modern the datum). The geodesists never claim to be exactly accurate. I think that discussion is immaterial to the actual statements in the datasheets, which when they mean "11.681 meters from the reference Big-Boy statue", they've measured it with whatever instrument and they got that measurement in plain old meters. When meters are quoted, it's always measured by hand, or instrument, is always the standard meter, and thus never is affected or redefined by any geodesy voodoo. There is no different "meter", to my limited understanding, because no geodetic framework claims exact accuracy point to point, nor do they try to redefine the meter. They only try to approach true accuracy. Say that 50 years from now our datum model allows us to repeat this A & B measurement scheme and get a difference of 10 nanometers. That's pretty darn good.

Yes, on the different notification warnings. There's a lot of US Engineer offices that are missing, and the notifications are different variations that I would like to note.

I'll propose the stupid idea, that it's a typo and they meant 3 inches. The RM 2 description says it only projects 2 inches above the ground.

Klemner, don't feel like you have to schlep to add for the list; I should have added a :-) after that statement.

Ok, ya'll in those areas. You have a lot of work to do.

A lot of disks will just have a central dot or point. I'll add it as a new type, and relabel the other US Engineer Dept. disks to be clearer.

The question is, what data do you want? I have the state by state Excel spreadsheets here. Lots of useful information, and you can sort by county name. It doesn't have the coordinates, but it's otherwise pretty useful. I can whip up the same thing with coordinates if you like. Doing it yourself: 1) Go to the NGS datasheet website. Click on "Archived Datasheets". Then "Yearly Archives". Choose Virginia from the state list, click "Get County Archives". Choose Fairfax County, click the radial Button "PC Unzipped", click "Download File", and save the file. 2) Go to the main NGS website. Click on the "download software" link in the upper right. You want DSFILES. Go down to its link, click through and download the PC executable. Now we're cooking with gas. 3) Open up DSFILES, choose the Files menu->Join Files->Disk Files. Choose the Fairfax county file, wherever you saved it. Click Run. Choose DSSELECT format. Now you choose what data you want. You might want the standard five choices (PID, DESIGNATION, POS_SRC, MONUMENTATION, REC_DATE) plus LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, and MARK_LOGO, in this order: PID, DESIGNATION, MONUMENTATION, LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, POS_SRC, MARK_LOGO, ALL_REC_DATE. Click OK, and it will save the info as a delimited text file in .dat format. Note that the fields are being delimited, separated, by the vertical bar character, | . 4) Open up Excel. Open the file you just saved (show all files). Choose Delimited in the new window and click "Next". Choose "Other", and put in the vertical bar symbol, | , which is over the left slash character just above the Enter key on my keyboard. Click "Next", and then "Finish". Now the data's in Excel, and you can save it.

Aha. For once, I have 3 answers for three questions. Maybe it's the fact we're buying a house and I won't be able to benchmark for a while, but I feel confident...*drum roll*... In reverse order: 1) Firefighter Skippy, you found one of the US Geological Survey "in Cooperation with the state of" series. During the Great Depression, and shortly thereafter, the USGS did many survey projects with various states. Looking through the photo logs, it seems like they usually used a generic "In cooperation with the state" mark, such as HW0004. However, folks have photographed the variants of "in cooperation with the state of" Connecticut, Hawaii, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Los Angeles County. Links are available here. Your photo is somewhat better than the current Connecticut photo; may I use it for that page? 2) Papa-Bear, it seems like the circle mark (w/ variation such as the circle w/ a dot, cross in a circle, line in a circle, etc.) is the symbol for a tidal or gaging station, such as the USGS: SX1518 . The USC&GS and National Ocean Service also use the circle (w/ a line and a cross inset respectively) for tidal gaging stations. However, you're on top of surveying more than I, so... Hmm, maybe I was wrong. Looking back through the list, here's a similar disk found by CallawayMT in MT: TJ0070. Maybe there's no significance to the circle. *drumming fingers* 3) Organized Chaos, the U.S. Engineer offices are regional, so that you're inside the Memphis office's district. Other than the occasional cross-state boundary mark (such as those found by PFF et. al.) by a state surveying office, the only specifically different city/state disks I've run across photos of are the U.S. Engineer district offices.

I don't look for caches at all. *shrug* If I plan out a route, it's solely for benchmarks, and I use the pure paper route, finding the benchmarks along my route and printing off their original NGS datasheets.

And remember, your local agencies (state, city, county, etc.) are probably very willing to have you work on their projects, recovering local marks.

I think it's a random, nearby disk, not connected with EH1385. Perhaps that's a good spot for a disk. This is a US Engineer Department disk (obviously), and they don't have their disks online or in a readily accessible database, even if they have them organized. Odds are you won't find any info. It's probably associated with nearby construction, like a dam, bridge, etc. Sorry about that. It is a new variant on the US Engineer Department disks; I haven't seen one from the Memphis office before.