ArtMan

I spent a half-day in the hot sun yesterday chasing down some marks across the river from St. Louis. One that had me stymied was JC1145 (NGS) (Geocaching). This is a stainless steel rod placed on top of a levee, alongside the road that runs on top. The published coordinates are scaled, and seem to be about 100 feet from the levee road. Aside from the distance from the center of the levee road and an elevation of 0.1 meter below the top of the levee, the only tie is to a witness post that — you will probably have guessed by now — has somehow vanished since the mark was monumented 30 years ago. I paced the area where I felt this station must be about four times without seeing anything. Possibly it is overgrown or under gravel from a realigned levee road, but with all due respect to the NGS (really!), I sure wish the party that set this mark back in 1981 had measured off the distance from the road, since I think there's a pretty good chance this is still on top of the levee. Somewhere. ~ArtMan~

Looks like the only thing in the NGS database at that intersection is C 569 (DE6040) Lots of benchmarks aren't in the NGS database (and so aren't listed at Geocaching.com). For an explanation, see the section of the FAQ titled, I found a benchmark, but it isn't in the database. Why? -ArtMan-

Just to be clear, the "NGS Benchmark Viewer" is the excellent work of a benchmarking hobbyist, not an official effort of the National Geodetic Survey. (The NGS has its own powerful search tools, but you may find them less user-friendly.) Another way is to examine the stamping on the disk. Particularly if it is in the format of a one-word name (e.g., TROY or EDWARDSVILLE), or a single letter followed by a number (e.g. V 146 or B 147), that stamping will usually be the disk's official designation, and you can enter that term in the Geocaching.com search box. Note that there are many additions and updates to the NGS dataset that do not appear in the data used by Geocaching.com, which uses a snapshot of NGS data that is now approaching a decade old. In particular, virtually any activity since about 2001 — including new disks and recovery reports — that is on the NGS datasheets will not be listed on the corresponding Geocaching.com page. -ArtMan- Benchmarking since August 2002

I worked for many years in DC, where in the last decade (read: after Sept 11, 2001), government buildings have been surrounded by sundry massive objects — jersey highway barriers, concrete planters, bollards — designed to prevent vehicles from being driven into buildings with unpleasant results. The consequence of all this is that Washington is possibly safer, but also a good bit uglier than it was a decade ago. The bollards in general have decorative cladding to provide an aesthetic veneer to what would otherwise be a brutalist, utilitarian contribution to the streetscape. But even a relatively attractive row of bollards is a reminder of how ubiquitous security (and, too often, "security") has become in the last 10 years. ArtMan

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make the trip from St. Louis for the dedication yesterday, but those interested in this once-a-decade event may find the Census Bureau press kit of interest. ~ArtMan~

Off-topic, but I think this might be of interest to people whose interests in history and cartography coincide ... Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave. SE Washington DC 20540 April 19, 2011 Press contact: Donna Urschel (202) 707-1639, durschel@loc.gov Public contact: John Hessler (202) 707-7223, jhes@loc.gov Library of Congress Holds Conference On Civil War Mapping, May 20 “Re-Imaging the U.S. Civil War: Reconnaissance, Surveying and Cartography” Cartographers during the U.S. Civil War invented new techniques and mapped the country—both Union and Confederate territories—more accurately than ever before in the nation’s history. The reasons for this improvement in mapping were complex, and the maps created ranged from typical battlefield cartography to demographic and thematic maps that were used for both policy and propaganda purposes. A Library of Congress conference will take a fresh look at the accomplishments of these cartographers and topographic engineers from a multi-disciplinary perspective, and will provide new insight into how their maps were used and how geographic space was conceived and measured during one of the most difficult periods in U.S. history. “Re-Imaging the U.S. Civil War: Reconnaissance, Surveying and Cartography” will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Friday, May 20, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The conference is free and open to the public, but reservations are needed: contact specialevents@loc.gov or call (202) 707-1616. Speakers in the morning and afternoon sessions include historians, conservators, engineers and a mapmaking reenactor. The schedule follows: Coffee: 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Morning Session: 9:30 a.m. to noon Edward Ayers, president of the University of Richmond, will present “Hidden Patterns of the Civil War.” Mapping, broadly understood, can help reveal complex patterns that are otherwise invisible. In a context as vast, varied and dynamic as the landscape of the American Civil War, all the tools at one’s disposal would be used to gain a sense of proportion and change. This presentation will demonstrate several such tools, mapping not only military history but also language, politics and the actions of enslaved people. Susan Schulten, professor of history at the University of Colorado, will present “Mapping the Strength of the Rebellion.” The sectional crisis prompted several uses of cartography, both on and off the battlefield. Some of the most original of these maps attempted to measure the strength of the rebellion. Maps of cotton production and the slave population exemplify this new purpose of cartography, designed to assess not just the landscape but the population and its resources. These maps represent different moments of the secession crisis and the ensuing war, and also the shifting uses of cartography in American life. Richard Stephenson, a former map librarian at the Library of Congress, will present “We Were Profoundly Ignorant of Our Country: The Struggle to Provide Accurate Maps During the U.S. Civil War.” At the start of the Civil War, much of the United States had not been mapped with the accuracy needed for successful military campaigns. Stephenson provides an historical analysis of the struggle to acquire the new geographical information necessary to provide maps to commanders in the field and the innovations developed by cartographers in the post-1859 period. Afternoon Session: 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. John Cloud, historian at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will discuss “Mapping the New Coasts of War.” The Civil War was an entirely novel experience in American life and novel demands on cartography were called for in order to capture the event. The staff of the U.S. Coast Survey re-purposed many traditional aids to navigation and created many new ones to assist mariners and to help determine strategic aspects of locations. As the war progressed, they also re-defined the coast in military-political terms, mapping the shifting boundaries between Union and Rebel domains—in an exercise never attempted before, or after, the war. Adrienne Lundgren, senior photographic conservator at the Library of Congress, will present “Shedding a Little Light: Early Photographic Techniques Used to Reproduce Maps.” This presentation will chronicle the first paper photographic printing process and its use in the reproduction of maps. During the Civil War, this technique became an important method for distributing updated maps quickly and efficiently. While often described in the period literature, the terminology surrounding these processes can be confusing. Variations in the technique will be described as well as methods to identify these unusual artifacts. Maps from the Library of Congress collections will be featured. Robert Mergel, a reenactor in the guise of a Union surveyor, will explain and demonstrate the surveying and cartographic methods of the period, using original equipment and describing experiences in the field. He will review the mapmaking of a selected group of Union Topographical Engineers (topogs) through their personal records, examples of their work and observations by colleagues. The group includes well-known topogs at the time, such as Gouverneur K. Warren and George Gordon Meade, and lesser-known topogs, such as William Emory Merrill, Orlando M. Poe and George A. Custer. Particular emphasis will be placed on the Peninsula Campaign and the Siege of Chattanooga as examples of early war-mapping attempts and the later field-mapping techniques learned “under fire.” Also, the strategic use of maps by W.T. Sherman during his march to the sea will be examined. Selected examples of the equipment will be available for viewing. Reception: 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. # # # PR11-85 4/19/11 ISSN: 0731-3527

Possibly the folks who run fiberoptic cable in Georgia should have read this. -ArtMan-

Let's see ... No update to the benchmark database in almost a decade. Exiling the main page link to the Web version of Siberia (despite no lack of room in the left nav column). A less generous member might conclude that Geocaching.com (Groundspeak) does not consider us benchmarkers as a very valued member of the community. ~ArtMan~

I'm resurrecting this six-year-old thread to wonder if there are any plans to update the 2000 Center of Population project with new state markers based on the 2010 Census data. I didn't see anything on the NGS website. Any info, anyone? (DaveD?) ~ArtMan~

Very excellent find! But I was hoping for something a little more contemporary than 1911....

Folks, For most of the 20th century, the United States controlled the Panama Canal Zone. I have to believe that, in conjunction with the construction and operation of the canal and for other purposes, surveyors, engineers, and scientists set and used benchmarks of various sorts. (I suppose the French did, too, for that matter, in their ill-fated canal-building effort.) I don't see any sign of datasheets for PIDs in the former Canal Zone in the NGS retrieval tools (which includes current US territories such as Guam and Puerto Rock, as well as some with no US connection I know of, including Honduras and Trinidad). Anyone know a source for Panama benchmark data? ~ArtMan~

Try this: http://benchmarks.scaredycatfilms.com/ ~ArtMan~

Multi-state trivia 188 submissions total, mostly in Virginia 121 that should be in City of Richmond, Virginia, but which are erroneously listed in Chesterfield County, an adjacent suburb. At one point the area was in the county, but that was before the city annexed the land. (I believe the annexation was related to efforts to remedy school segregation, but I haven't researched this enough to confirm it.) 3 listed in Richmond that should be in Chesterfield. In Virginia, it should be noted, there are a bunch of cities that are independent, county-level jurisdictions. So Richmond is not part of any county. 54 listed in Fairfax County that should be in the City of Alexandria, City of Falls Church, Arlington County and, in one case, Washington, DC. That last one is on Columbia Island, adjacent to the Virginia shoreline of the Potomac River, but an historical anomaly places the boundary along the Virginia shoreline (not down the middle of the river, which is usually the case). The island is considered to be in the river channel, so DC gets the island. 4 in New Jersey 3 in Maryland 1 in Missouri, with respect to RogBarn, who we thought got 'em all. Apparently, this mark (JC1817) used to have incorrect coordinates, which placed it in the wrong jurisdiction. ~ArtMan~

I've been using GPS Visualizer, which allows you to upload data in any of a variety of formats, and display the point(s) or a map. The maps available include the usual (Google maps, USGS topo) as well as others ... including a bare map of county outlines. I would not consider that definitive, however. I've been working on a fairly large group of suspected wrong-county PIDs, and my protocol has included using the county outline map just for the initial cut , then plotting on a USGS topo map (which usually has pretty authoritative boundaries marked), reviewing the description text (e.g., for street intersections), and in some cases checking my best assessment of the location of the mark against municipal or county GIS information posted online. If everything confirms a new county assessment, I'll report it. If there are discrepancies, I won't (or at least I'll flag it in my report). good luck, ~ArtMan~

DaveD, Would you prefer that mis-assigned states/counties be posted here or emailed directly to you (or someone else at NGS)? Also, do you want supporting data, or just PID and corrected county, as tosborn has posted? -ArtMan-

I have no idea where I got this thought from, but didn't they NOT use the 'O' in order to avoid confusion with a '0'? Or did I just pull that out of could-stand-to-lose-a-few-pounds air? --Me. That sounded right when I read it ... until I searched for some O-something designations. There are many, such as MY0338 (O 1) in Massachusetts, AH0720 (O 46) in Texas, GV2454(O 17) in Virginia, and many other variations. -ArtMan-

Hard for me to tell from the photo, but that first character looks more like an O (oh) than a Q. There is no O 743 in the NGS database, but it seems likely, or at least plausible, that a mark with that designation was set.

These coordinates will get you into the neighborhood: 41.4473, 45.3763. You may be able to tweak it a bit more if you can visualize where in the monastery complex the mark is located. I would be a little surprised if Georgia has their geodetic data online, given the legacy of Soviet secrecy, but you never know. Be sure to let us know if you find anything more. ~ArtMan~

Nice work, Joseph! One small suggestion - the bullseye cursor (or whatever you call it) that stays at the center of the map sometimes disappears as it blends into dark colors underneath. You might consider a user option to change color, possibly to toggle it to white or yellow, or perhaps offer more options than than. A small quibble on an excellent project. Thanks for doing it! -ArtMan-

Thanks for posting this, GeorgeL! I lived in DC for decades and probably drove along this stretch of Mass. Ave. hundreds of times and never gave it a thought. The Naval Observatory moved to its present quarters in 1893. The previous location, on 23rd Street near the State Department headquarters and the Lincoln Memorial, had become unsuitable, in part because of noise and pollution. The move out to the present site in what was then pretty much the country — although the triangulation diagram does show a platted subdivision just outside the 1000' radius — was the equivalent today of putting an astronomical observatory on a mountaintop in Chile. -ArtMan-

I don't trust the site to resize/resample my pictures. I always crop and resize my photos to maximum 600 pixels (longest dimension), and so the uploaded picture is < 125k per these guidelines on each photo upload page — Some Tips * If your original image is under 125k or 600 pixels wide, the largest image will not be resized. * It doesn't do the best resizing job. It is preferable to edit your own larger image. I second the GIMP. It's a great open-source program. Though it has most of the same functionality of Photoshop, it works quite differently, so there is a learning curve, but that comes with power most of the time. -ArtMan-

JC1594 is, to me, ambiguous. The description refers to a nail in a plank, which sounds like something to position an instrument over, not observe from the ground. STATION DESCRIPTION JC1594 JC1594'DESCRIBED BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1871 (CHB) JC1594'ON TOP OF CAP OF STANDPIPE, 180 FEET HIGH, AT CORNER OF GRAND JC1594'AVENUE AND FOURTEENTH STREET, ST. LOUIS. MARKED BY NAIL IN PLANK JC1594'NAILED TO TIMBERS WHICH ARE FRAMED IN BRICK MASONRY AT TOP OF JC1594'STANDPIPE. FOUR ARROWS POINTING TOWARD STATION ARE CUT IN TOP JC1594'OF IRON CAP OF STANDPIPE. That said, it's a standpipe tank, which is normally an intersection station. And the "history" section says it was "first observed," not monumented. -ArtMan-

Picking up an old thread ... I looked at a few of the photos Dave has used, and many (most?) of them don't conform to the NGS 2003 Digital Photo Requirements document. Does NGS welcome submission of non-conforming photos that nonetheless might be helpful in the future to those seeking to recover these marks? Pictures, in other words, that may be worth 700 or 800 words, if not a full thousand. If so, how should they be submitted? -ArtMan- PS - There is a great tool that might be helpful in captioning. It's called ImageMagick. I've used it in the past for converting file formats. But it will also do a good job of adding captions to photos. (See below.) It's a command line tool, so there definitely is a learning curve, but it's worth exploring if you're interesting in captioning benchmark or other photos. Contact me for more details if interested.

You sure that's not "astronomical stations"? -ArtMan-

You might try browsing the map on Scaredycat's site. I didn't see anything that looked promising to me, but I might not be looking in the right place. ArtMan