ArtMan

Well done! I think there should be extra credit for recoveries found in areas not open to the general public, especially if tanks are involved. A suggestion about photographs, if I may: I think it's helpful to show the disk (or other marker) in context of nearby landmarks, to help the next person — who may be a professional — quickly locate the mark. Here are a couple of examples of how I do it. In most cases I draw a box around the target, using the "stroke" feature on Photoshop Elements. (Other graphic programs will have a similar feature, possibly with a different name.) This example, from JC1173 (St. Louis, Mo.), clearly shows that the disk is on the first round column after a bunch of square ones. In the past I generally used an arrow, which is probably a more popular indicator. Here's an example from KV7118 in Morris Co., N.J. —

Happy Benchmarking in 2016. And enjoy the holidays, however you celebrate. (Responsibly, of course!)

Washington Monument 1913 (HV4442) is one of those intersection stations, but it has the very rare distinction of having been occupied. A few years ago, when the monument was surrounded by scaffolding for repairs, crews from the National Geodetic Survey installed GPS equipment on top of the monument. One finding of the latest survey: the monument is a bit shorter than previously reported.

I'm wondering about going back to visit benchmarks that I've logged (geocaching) and filed recovery reports (NGS) on before. Do you do it? I've probably only done it on a handful of PIDs, mainly when I know that the situation as changed, for example a previously found mark has gone missing. But with more than a dozen years of reports behind me, it would seem well justified to look again if there haven't been recent updates. On the other hand, it seems less challenging, less novel, less interesting to go back to a previously recovered mark. A lot of the pleasure in benchmarking for me is that it gets me out to explore places I might not otherwise get to. So why return to someplace I've already seen? On the other (other other?) hand, much can change over 3, 5, 8, or 13 years. Thoughts?

(Sorry, deleting this post for technical reasons)

Sometime in the past several years, responsibility for the Missouri Geographic Reference System appears to have moved from the Dept. of Natural Resources to the Agriculture Dept. Some (many? most?) of the state's control markers have datasheets that include detailed maps showing the location of the mark. A picture, in this case is worth many words, if not actually 1,000, to help locate an elusive benchmark. If you are looking for one in Missouri, it could be worth your time to see if the state datasheet (like this one) has a map. This page has a map for retrieving datasheets but not, as far as I can see, any way of searching by designation (name) or PID. ArtMan

Even assuming "highly accurate height" info was available for this ESSO mark, wouldn't that elevation be for the "refinery datum?" Could that be converted into elevation for the NGS datum in use in 1991?

This is misleading. Keep in mind that the scripts that generate datasheets *always* give the first entry 'monumented' or 'description' recoveries, even if they're not the ones that did it. Since there are no original notes from Esso in the NGS database, MD SHA's recovery note is the first, and therefore their entry is marked in the history table as being 'monumented' by. (Hell - I had two in the NGS database that said *I* monument them, until I asked Dave to correct it - once he imported notes from paper files into the stations, I was no longer the monumenter. ) Didn't mean to be misleading, just suggesting that we don't know the whole story and we are left to suppose. For example, is it possible that the mark was monumented, say, in 1970 (in the "Esso" era), and then in 1991 a Maryland SHA crew comes along, properly surveys and documents the mark, and stamps the pre-existing disk "1991" before reporting to NGS? I'm puzzled by that date.... -ArtMan-

Brian, Great recovery and interesting post! I once lived a few miles from there. ESSO, for those who don't know, is the former brand now known in the US as Exxon. (It's still Esso in Canada.) The word Esso comes from the initials S O, referring to the Standard Oil Company, the former corporate parent. Curious that an Esso disk would be monumented in 1991, since the name change was two decades earlier. Maybe it's a leftover disk from a batch made up years earlier? Or maybe there is some corporate subsidiary that still carries the Esso name, e.g. Esso Property Services, or something like that. The state highway administration is listed as the monumenting agency, which would indeed be unusual in my experience if the SHA installed an Esso disk. But maybe the disk was already there, and the SHA did the necessary measurement and reporting to get it into the NGS database? The stem in its concrete post may have some limited value for survey purposes. An NGS report would usually categorize this as "poor" with an explanation that only the stem remains in situ. The severed disk itself will be of no survey value, I think. I've never heard of one being reattached to its old stem. You could contact the SHA or NGS but I would be comfortable keeping it as a souvenir. Others more knowledgeable may have more information and I would welcome being corrected. The disk refers to "refinery datum," which is interesting. It's like the oil company is its own sovereign nation with its own datum. (I thought the same thing in 1989, when company officials responding to the Exxon Valdez oil spill referred to the company's ships as the "Exxon Navy" and its planes and helicopters as the "Exxon Air Force.") Is such a corporate datum common in the oil business or other industries located near the water, as a refinery would be? Thanks for posting this. -ArtMan-

Given the enormous amount of white space on the home page, I think it is overly charitable to think there is a competition for screen space there. In a previous redesign, benchmarking was demoted to an inconspicuous link at the bottom, and there's no design reason why it couldn't have remained there. As I've noted in this forum before, Groundspeak is a business, and — I'm presuming here — benchmarkers comprise a very small slice of the customer base (single-digit percentage?) and benchmarking has fewer revenue-generating opportunities than geocaching. Pretty much none, actually, other than premium membership. Maybe that's a missed opportunity; maybe the company has its hands full on the geocaching side. I don't know.But while I'm disappointed with the way benchmarking has been treated, I don't criticize the company for the choices they made. But like many other benchmarkers, I am disappointed. And I think it's unfortunate that, going forward, most newcomers to geocaching will never even know about benchmarking and have a chance to discover it for themselves. I've had a little bit of occasional fun (and, often, frustration) looking for caches, but I've had a lot of fun searching for benchmarks, while at the same time enriching myself as I learned about a corner of our infrastructure that is hidden in plain sight, not to mention making an actual contribution by reporting my findings to the NGS. -ArtMan-

Maybe, but might it also be possible that the city has a utility easement and that the property is casamig's?

There are a couple of good map-based benchmark searching tools. One of our own benchmarking peeps has an excellent site benchmarks.scaredycatfilms.com, that has a user-friendly, Google Maps-based tool. You can find benchmarks in an area of interest, and click on links to either the Geocaching.com page or the official National Geodetic Survey (NGS) datasheet. Also, the NGS, which maintains the database of benchmarks used by Geocaching,* offers the NGS Data Explorer, which is also useful. though it may be a bit more technical and doesn't include the helpful Geocaching links. -ArtMan- _____ * The benchmark data on Geocaching.com is nearly 15 years out of date. The information was captured about 2002 and has never been updated (except, of course, by users of Geocaching.com). As a result, the thousands of benchmarks added since the early 2000s are not on Geocaching, nor are official recovery reports or improved location coordinates. I strongly urge you, if you want to find benchmarks, to learn to use the official NGS datasheets, especially now that many of them include photos.

You're welcome, and thanks for the pix. I can't tell from the photos, but I wonder if there is a small (about 1-2 mm) dimple in the top of the protruding metal piece. Often, there is such a "datum point" to help surveyors using the mark know where to rest their plumb bob.

First, welcome to the forum. Glad you caught the bug! Few of us can claim to have a benchmark on our property, so you are in a small, elite club! Most readily-identified benchmarks are survey disks, typically circular, a few inches across, and stamped with identifying information. But a benchmark can also be a chiseled mark in stone or concrete, the top of a tall structure (church spire, factory chimney, etc), a nail, or really anything that can be described and identifed by surveyors in the future. So your mark may indeed be the remnant of a former lamp post which, at the same time, serves as a marker of known elevation. It appears that the benchmarks are maintained by the water department, which makes some sense since they would need elevation information to make sure water flows downhill as intended. They are listed, hundreds of them, in a spreadsheet on the Chicago city website. Incidentally, I got to the website http://www.cityofchi...benchmarks.html by Googling chicago illinois survey monuments. Here's what I found there: BENCHMARK NUMBER: 218 NORTHING: 1923767.11 EASTING: 1141689.489 ELEVATION: 33.932 LOCATION DESCRIPTION: 9.7' E. OF W. LINE OF LECLAIRE AVE. LOCATION DESCRIPTION: 210.4' N. OF S. LINE OF PATTERSON AVE. MARK DESCRIPTION: IN BOOKS 425 AND 426 YEAR BENCHMARK ELEVATION FIXED: 1978 BOOK NUMBER: 425 LATITUDE: 41.9468873007 LONGITUDE: -87.7545950055 ESTIMATED LOCATION: 41.94688730070, -87.75459500550 If you take that last line, and put it in a Google Maps search box, it should show you the location to a pretty good degree of accuracy. Note: I don't know what books 425 and 426 refer to; maybe someone else here will, but I assume it's a city record of some sort. Also, the 1978 date that elevation was fixed is not necessarily how old the object is, just when its elevation was determined Hope this is of some help. Maybe someone else can help you with posting a photo, which we would like to see. If you can put the photo online somewhere where it has a URL, you can add a photo. You can't upload a picture directly to the forum; it has to be hosted elsewhere. Google Docs and Dropbox would work, but there may be other free and easier solutions. Anyone? ArtMan

Pretty close to 100 percent likelihood that Groundspeak will never update or otherwise improve the benchmark part of Geocaching.com, in my opinion. Well, maybe if there is money to be made in it, but they have never tried to promote benchmark activities on this site, and in fact have done the opposite. Not just an obsolete database, but also making it more and more difficult for anyone, especially newcomers, to find the Benchmark Quarter. (Hint: it's at the far end of the Old City, past the Armenian pottery sellers; if you reach the camel bazaar you've gone too far.) It's their business decision, and he has the right to do so, but I think it's too bad. ArtMan

I have no idea if the query is legit or not, but it is entirely possible that the WSJ would dispatch a reporter on such a story. The Journal's quirky front-page feature story, known as the A-hed, has been a fixture of the paper since 1941. Recent topics have included the pigeons that roost in German train stations, competition among US counties named for George Washington, setting a Guinness record on bubble-wrap popping, and a dismaying report on making beer from sewage. I submit that a piece on benchmarks and those who seek them is not at all out of line. ArtMan

Easy to remember direct link to the benchmarking page: http://www.geocaching.com/mark/ There used to be a link at the bottom of the Geocaching.com home page, but it seems to have been dropped in favor of annoying video, extra-large fonts, and too much wasted (white) space ... like pretty much every other web page designed these days. :-( Envy you being in Puerto Rico. Enjoy the weather, the coffee, the rum, the pastries at your neighborhood panaderia, and the mofongo! (The driving? Not so much....) ~ArtMan~

Resurrecting this old thread to note that CityLab (an online extension of The Atlantic magazine) has a nicely illustrated article on these vintage navigation artifacts ... some of which are still in active use in Montana, according to author John Metcalf. http://www.citylab.c...-arrows/385472/ Note especially the link to the "daunting but thorough web of flight routes," which is a product of work by longtime but now dormant (and sorely missed!) forum contributors RogBarn and Zhanna.

I don't have much to add except that the mark does not appear to be marked on either the 1989 or 2012 USGS topo maps (Berlin quadrangle) on http://store.usgs.gov/. The 15-minute Sayre topo map from 1960 shows two benchmarks north of the curve -- 2079 (presumably the elevation in feet) about a quarter-mile north of highway 6 and 2104 maybe a mile north of that. 2079 is shown on the east side of US-283 but the elevation doesn't tally, and it's much too far away, I think, to be the mark in question. ~ArtMan~

Not sure any of us can explain it more than you can explain why I should "spend/waste" my time playing bridge or driving an ATV or any other activity I don't happen to find appealing. I've been benchmarking, sometimes seriously and other times not, for a dozen years. I enjoy using it as an excuse to explore places I wouldn't otherwise visit, as an opportunity to learn something about my community, as a way of honing my observational skills looking for bits of the build environment that we pass every day but don't think much about. Also, unlike Geocaching, I enjoy the fact that, when I file a report with NGS or sometimes even just by logging with Geocaching.com, I'm making a tangible contribution to knowledge that may be of actual use — to land surveyors and geodisists, contributing to flood control, ensuring the integrity of maps, etc. If this doesn't interest you, fine. Do something else. If you think it might, give it a try. You'll find lots of happy benchmarkers here willing and eager to help you and share our enthusiasm. -ArtMan-

Maybe historic USGS topo map? http://nationalmap.gov/historical/ Or possibly vintage state highway maps, or even county maps, none of which are likely to be online (though I haven't searched). As an aside, I have to say one of the great pleasures of benchmarking over the years has been reading decades-old descriptions that identify a tire store as a former A&P supermarket, or a distressed commercial strip as a onetime major U.S. highway (or, for that matter, onetime rural lane). And outmoded terminology shows up all the time. There are, for example, numerous marks that use a definitely politically incorrect term for a mental hospital, including an intersection station I see all the time. ArtMan in Saint Louis

I filed some reports with NGS last month. The usual advice is to be a pretty proficient benchmarker on Geocaching.com before doing NGS recovery reports. The language and attitude is different: government database used by professionals vs. a hobby site. That said, NGS is happy to have eyes and ears on the ground to help them keep their records current. ArtMan

Holiday cheer to all! Art in Saint Louis

Interesting object, that's for sure. I like mloser's idea that the holes in the top part are to mount an instrument. foxtrot xray, you might consider contacting the public affairs people at USNO, to see if they might point you to someone who might help. -ArtMan-

I'm observing some weird behavior with the very excellent Scaredy Cat Films Benchmark Viewer. I select Pennsylvania, and the map below displays Pennsylvania benchmarks, centered around State College. Then I enter Danville in the Location Search box, and the map changes to Danville, California! or I select Pennsylvania, and the map below displays Pennsylvania benchmarks, centered around State College. Then I enter Clearfield in the Location Search box, and the map changes to Clearfield, Utah! Same with Middleburg (Virginia instead of Pennsylvania) and Wayne (New Jersey instead of Pennsylvania). Philadelphia, however, returned William Penn's town, not the one in Mississippi. I tried several other states, but couldn't reproduce the issue. Anyone else observing this? -ArtMan-