ArtMan

Often, tis true: not much. But I've seen some pretty sketchy photos posted where a larger image or better resolution might make a difference in discerning the stamping or details of the surrounding environment in an area shot. ArtMan

Sorry, but there IS a loss of detail. The image is 300 px wide (maximum), and enlarging it in the browser only means that the same number of pixels (i.e., the same amount of visual information) is just spread over more screen real estate. And since the picture was as large as 600 px across when uploaded by the user, it means that the image quality was degraded yet again after first being saved in the camera — except on high end cameras that support RAW files — as a lossy jpg, then probably edited and downsampled to get a small enough picture to be accepted by geocaching.com, and now a third time unless you are uploading 300 px-wide images ... which apparently we should now be doing. So three iterations of lossy saves. Not good for the image at all. ArtMan

What bothers me the most is the lack of transparency. Jeremy is running a business. Fine. I'm glad he's successful at it. Geocaching.com has brought much joy to many people, and I hope it has been fun and profitable to those who run the site also. Benchmarks probably represent a small percentage of the site's users, and probably account for an even smaller percentage of revenue. (No bling to speak of, and probably only a handful of premium memberships.) So if Groundspeak wants to discourage benchmarkers by not updating the database for a decade, making our portion of the site hard to find, and reducing the size of images to limit their usefulness, I can understand that. I would welcome a statement of intentions, even one in pseudo-English business-speak, e.g., "We are focusing attention on the Geocaching portion of the site to maximize the user experience of the vast majority of visitors to Geocaching.com. We are pleased that many benchmark players have enjoyed that small corner of the site, but hope that as we continue to improve Geocaching they will find a more rewarding activity there. In the meantime, as we concentrate on Geocaching, we are reluctantly unable to provide our prior level of support and service to the benchmark community." But I would rather that Mr. Irish think of benchmarking as an opportunity for public service, rather than an underperforming part of his enterprise. Many cultural and educational institutions in our communities benefit from local businesses that donate money and time and expertise to the benefit of all. The charitable obligation doesn't go away because the business is in cyberspace. Google donates millions to sundry charities. I don't think it's asking too much for Groundspeak to continue to support and to restore full service to benchmarking as a public service — to which the participation of professionals in surveying and geodesy attest — even if it is not a particularly profitable part of its corporate portfolio. ArtMan

Looks like everything is downsized to 300 px (if my very small sample is any guide). Photos at that size are about one-quarter the size of a 600 px picture. Could be that this is a way for Groundspeak to save on bandwidth and storage. Or possibly there is some other explanation, though I can't come up with one at the moment. Whatever the reason, it is unfortunate. Some might see this as yet another example of the company's continued focus on Geocaching and continuing deprecation of Benchmarking. They certainly have every right to do so, I just am sad to see it happen. Again. This might be a good time to think about uploading photos to NGS, for those who file reports with the agency. (However, a number of photos I uploaded going back to October, using the DSWorld software, have still not appeared on NGS datasheets. Possibly they are swamped with submissions.) ArtMan

Jim, Great work as always, Sorry if this question has come up before, but what software do you use to actually draw the maps? Something off-the-shelf or home-grown? Thanks again, ArtMan

Chiseled marks on sandstone after many decades of exposure to the elements can certainly be lost through erosion. I am, like most here, a hobbyist. I am not an engineer or surveyor, but I rarely report a mark (to NGS, that is) as destroyed. If there is the least doubt, I'll report it as not found, and in my recovery report I'll explain why I think the station is 'lost' - that's the term I use, which I have seen numerous times in recovery reports that appear to have been filed by professionals. Disks can often get beat up pretty bad. If it looks undisturbed, despite the cosmetic damage, and if it's pretty clear that this is the correct disk (not always easy if the stamping is gone), I'll report it as found/good. If it may be disturbed in such a way that its horizontal or vertical position may have been affected - whichever is relevant - then I'll report it as poor. In any event, it's important to document in your recovery report what you found. If I am pretty sure this is station FOO, but the stamping is illegible, my recovery report will say something like "station believed found four feet from fire hydrant as described, but disk is defaced and stamping is illegible. Datum point is visible." If it's a judgment call, make a reasonable call, but explain what you found. My two cents, anyway. -ArtMan-

It looks like the Vermont - New Hampshire boundary was in dispute, and Vermont sued its neighbor in the U.S. Supreme Court to adjudicate the matter. (Normally, the high court handles only appeals, but in limited circumstances, including when one state sues another, it has "original jurisdiction," and hears the case as a trial court.) In the case of Vermont v. New Hampshire, 290 U.S. 579 (1934), the court defined the boundary on the western side of the Connecticut River and identified numerous points along the boundary to be marked by monuments. The court went on, "Samuel S. Gannett, Esq., is hereby appointed special commissioner to locate and mark upon the ground the boundary line at the points specified herein, and to make record of the point so marked with all convenient speed." Apparently that "convenient speed" took 18 years, since the disk pictured is dated 1952. According to Joseph Francis Zimmerman, the dispute is an old one, dating back to 1782, so maybe the slow rotation of the wheels of justice is understandable. Zimmerman says Vermont filed suit in 1915; if he's referring to the case decided in 1934, that would make this a very long process indeed. Zimmerman says that in 2004, the two state attorneys general met on a bridge over the Connecticut River to continue a seven decades long tradition of meeting ever seven years to ensure the monuments are still in place. Unclear if they continued the tradition this year. Although this mark is not in the NGS database — most survey disks of all the various flavors are not — there probably is a special publication somewhere that provides a detailed listing of all the marks along the boundary. A university or state library in Vermont or New Hampshire likely would have it. -ArtMan-

Also, I've wondered whether the particular satellites overhead at a given time might be a factor, i.e. at noon on Tuesday I could get a good fix, but not on Friday at dawn. GPS satellites are not geosynchronous, so the subset of the total constellation is in view now might be more favorable than those in view at another time. -ArtMan-

I'm trying to keep him busy by sending him photos of marks recovered in the past. After doing this for 9+ years, I've amassed quite an achive. Amazing thing is, almost mark comes back to me clearly once I see a photo. Great tour down memory lane. Wish I remembered what I had for dinner on Tuesday, though.... -ArtMan-

Some photos I uploaded two weeks ago (using DSWorld 2.10.00) sized 768x576 got downsized somewhere along the line to 640x480. DSWorld gave me no error message or other indication that it was scaling my pix, so it may have been done by NGS. Or possibly an example of why it's important to upgrade.... -ArtMan-

I think about the only hobby as weird as benchmarking is marathoning. Best of luck on Saturday! ~ArtMan~

I think this is in the wrong forum, but I would suggest getting a model that can do double-duty as a general purpose (i.e., vehicle, hiking) navigation device, not just one focused on your hobby. ~ArtMan~

As Rotareneg says, the Groundspeak management doesn't seem particularly interested in our little corner of Geocaching.com, so it's possibly worth an appeal, but don't be too optimistic. The file name assigned to the uploaded photos (e.g., 0cf4e078-107a-442c-88fe-5c2a514fda44.jpg), look random to me, but maybe they encode the PID or some other identifying information. Regardless, a quick perusal of the Gallery suggests that some percentage of the photos are labeled with their PID, so possibly at least those images could be scraped. I've been including the PID, Designation, and location for a while now, precisely so it would show up in the Gallery. A campaign to active (serious) benchmarkers to include at least the PID in their photo caption (and preferably a bit more than that, e.g. "Area view, Z 283 (JC1122), Monroe Co, Ill.") might be helpful. Or would that still be too much work, Dave? Maybe this is just a way to get all of us who have massive libraries of photos to organize, label, rename, and submit them to NGS. ~ArtMan~

The written description is important, but the written description often refers to the built environment, where things change all the time. (Two recent recoveries of mine involved a relocated highway and a relocated levee.) New datums notwithstanding, latitude and longitude is a more permanent way of identifying a place. So I try to submit updated coordinates for stations where the published location is scaled. Even a handheld GPS is more accurate than approximating the position from a paper topo map. Although most scaled coordinates are pretty accurate, in my experience — less than 0.5 seconds off is pretty typical — sometimes it's a lot more than that, and particular in rural or otherwise undeveloped environments where landmarks are few, a little more accuracy can't but help. If I don't take HH2 readings at the site (and sometimes even if I do), I find that Google Maps (right-click to drop a marker with Lat and Long in DD.DDDDDD format) or The National Map are excellent tools. In most cases Google seems to have better imagery, so you can get a better fix, but I sort of trust The National Map more, if I can get a good location on that platform. ~ArtMan~

Thanks for mentioning this; I hadn't noticed this capability in DSWORLD before. That said, if you run DSWORLD (in XP at least) in a non-administrator account, it won't allow you to write to the file (in the \Program Files\DSWORLD directory) that is used to store the data before uploading to NGS. The workaround is: right-click on DSWORLD and select 'run as...' and choose your administrator account. I wish DSWORLD had a couple of other features: logging of activity, so you could see, for example, what wrong-county info you've reported, and a way to associate your name and contact info with the uploaded data in case there are issues on the other end. Or maybe the program has those features and I haven't discovered them ~ArtMan~

(Emphasis added) Are photos this large actually being accepted now by NGS? With 2.5 times more pixels, the larger images should provide better resolution and detail for users. But as a former bureaucrat myself (now in remission), I know that often there is a time lag, and not always a brief one, between decision and implementation. ~ArrtMan~

Bob, Oddly, the JD0048 log gives the date as 06/10/2001, but if you go to Glenn Rice's page listing all his recoveries, the date given is 06/10/2002. I don't know what accounts for the discrepancy. However, the NGS recovery from 6/10/2001 (not 2011, as you mis-typed) seems to confirm the earlier date. Mark your calendar for the 15th anniversary on June 10, 2016 ... unless an earlier log surfaces! ~ArtMan~

A lot of us have been looking for benchmarks for a long time now. (I'm talking as a hobby here, not as a professional pursuit.) My first were HV1697 (DC VA BOUNDARY MK 6 RM 2) and other nearby marks in Arlington, Va., back in 2002. That was, I seem to recall, soon after benchmarks were added to the Geocaching site. Maybe someone has a better institutional memory than I do. In any event, it got me wondering what the first benchmark log here was, and when the first member of our Geocaching.com community reported a recovery to the NGS. ~ArtMan~

They are navigation warning lights, designed to prevent aviators from slamming into a large masonry obstacle. Above them, at the top of the monument, is the capstone, which is not made of stone, but in fact is aluminum, possibly the most exotic and expensive material available when it was set in 1884. An authoritative description of the process appeared in 1995 in JOM, the journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society Somewhere in these forums is perhaps the coolest photo ever of a benchmark: Dave Doyle atop Washington Monument 1913 (HV4442), a rare example of an intersection station being occupied. (Actually, it happened twice - in 1934 and again in 1999). ~ArtMan~

Actually, that's seamless.usgs.gov. I just took a few minutes to look at it, and I'm baffled by what you find useful. Why don't you post a short tutorial and share your wisdom? ~ArtMan~

I dunno. Your intuitive may be my counterintuitive, and vice versa. I think USGS should do a better job of guiding the user who is looking for the historical maps to the right place, but once they are there, I think it's a great idea to have current and historical maps all in one place. Also: remember that until a few years ago, the way you got topo maps was to order them by mail or visit an outdoors specialty store. I love paper maps, but I wouldn't want to go back.

Oops - should have included that. Go to the USGS Store and click on "Map Locator," which will take you to this page. Click on the link in this headline to get the map: "Historical maps available for select states now! View Status Map" ballo But the map itself (perhaps counter-intuitively) isn't linked to the historical maps. To get to the historical maps, you apparently navigate to the area of interest in the same way you search for current maps, but the list of maps will include historical ones, when available. Example, search for Washington, DC, and the available maps include 14 items going back to 1890 (though some look like they might be duplicates, but the file sizes vary, so maybe they're not). Hope this helps, ~ArtMan~ Washington West 7.5X7.5 2011 Washington West 7.5X7.5 1983 Mount Vernon 30X30 1897 Mount Vernon 30X30 1897 Mount Vernon 30X30 1894 Mount Vernon 30X30 1894 Mount Vernon 30X30 1894 Mount Vernon 30X30 1894 Mount Vernon 30X30 1894 Mount Vernon 30X30 1894 Mount Vernon 30X30 1891 Mount Vernon 30X30 1890 Washington West 30X60 1984 Washington 1X2 1989

I haven't received a reply to my inquiry yet, but just in the last few days, USGS has posted a map showing progress in the project. As you can see, most states already have a substantial number of scanned historical maps online.

Thanks, all, for your thoughts. Comments in order ... John, The 'road' is currently a gravel bike trail (though adequate for one-way vehicular passage. I didn't measure it, but it's probably about 12 feet wide. I concentrated my search a few feet to the northeast of the northeast edge. Unfortunately, I don't have a metal detector, which might have been exceptionally handy in this case. chiknlips45, I based my search area on the scaled coordinates. After reading your post, and using Google Maps, I approximated the distance from the intersection of the levee road with highway 3, and like you I came out a couple of hundred feet northwest of where I had focused my search. However, I did go out on the levee (northwest of Water St) to approximately the point measured and didn't see anything. But the distance (1 km / 0.6 miles) is, I suspect, based on a vehicle odometer, which means it could be plus or minus 1/20 of a mile — another 260 feet or so — and when I go back, I'll explore a greater distance northwest from the road. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the road is not on top of the levee; it is, except where it dips down to grade level at Water Street. I'm a transplanted Easterner, and levees are new to me, but it looks like the road originally followed the levee, crossing Water Street at levee-top elevation, rather than dipping down to the road on a more northeasterly alignment. There would have to be a bridge over the road then, and possibly it was removed to allow taller trucks to pass. I don't know. The 1989 Cahokia quad seems to show the levee road going right through, though this may be a simplification. AZcachemeister, as a former federal employee, I have to note that (1) NGS records may include maps and field notes that are not published on datasheets and which may aid in recovery, and (2) it's not the oft-abused federal employee who may have to take six hours to find this station. That honor goes to some oft-abused state or county employee, or surveyor or engineer who will pass the cost on to the client. joegeodesist, good observations, both, but alas not very useful to us. Some non-federal jursidictions have published datasheets that include diagrams of station locations (Arlington County, Virginia, and St. Louis County, Missouri, are two that come to mind). A picture really is worth a thousand words. John (again), I think you're looking at the wrong levee. There are two levees at this location, and the datasheet specifies the north (actually northeast) levee. The benchmarks that are marked on the topo map (415 and 423) are on the south levee. Also, except for the intersection with Water Street, the levee does run on the top of the levee. ~ArtMan~

Perhaps this has been mentioned previously in this forum, but I've just noticed that USGS is embarking on a program to scan and publish online historical topographic maps. According to a Fact Sheet (PDF) issued in January — The USGS Historical Quadrangle Scanning Project (HQSP) is scanning all scales and all edi- tions of approximately 250,000 topographic maps published by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) since the inception of the topographic mapping program in 1884. This scanning will provide a comprehensive digital repository of USGS topo- graphic maps, available to the public at no cost. Although some historical maps are now available online, the selection is spotty. In addition, the new project will provide georeferenced (GeoPDF®) copies, which will obviously be of great help to us as well as many other categories of users. The maps were supposed to start becoming available in mid-2011, but I suspect this will be a multi-year project, with newly-scanned maps coming online gradually. I've written to USGS to see if I can find out more about the status of this project, and will post info when I get a reply. ~ArtMan~ [edited to correct typo]