Z15

What can be more fun then finding a survey marker that was set in 1871, 148 yrs ago. DESIGNATION - MIDDLE USLS 1871 RL1517_MARKER: V = STONE MONUMENT RL1517_SETTING: 0 = UNSPECIFIED SETTING RL1517_STABILITY: D = MARK OF QUESTIONABLE OR UNKNOWN STABILITY RL1517_SATELLITE: THE SITE LOCATION WAS REPORTED AS NOT SUITABLE FOR RL1517+SATELLITE: SATELLITE OBSERVATIONS - June 27, 2005 RL1517 RL1517 HISTORY - Date Condition Report By RL1517 HISTORY - 1871 MONUMENTED USLS RL1517 HISTORY - 20050627 GOOD GEOCAC RL1517 RL1517 STATION DESCRIPTION RL1517 RL1517'DESCRIBED BY US LAKE SURVEY 1871 RL1517'ABOUT MIDWAY BETWEEN PEQUAMING POINT AND POINT ABBAYE, ON EAST RL1517'SHORE OF KEWEENAW BAY. MARKED BY STONE POST.

https://archive.bangordailynews.com/1991/11/22/epping-plains-site-of-ambitious-1850s-survey-base-line-in-columbia-one-of-6-used-to-map-eastern-u-s/

I found it here ►https://thesurveystation.com/usgs-datasheets/usgs-datasheets-ohio/

I believe DaveD posted this some time back and it explains the USGS marks in detail Note "TT" stands for Transit Traverse "TWC" is the initials of the crew chief in charge

Marks like this set in boulders are often unreliable. I recall many years ago we were tasked by the NGS state advisor to go reset a USGS/C&GS BM that was in the way of county road major re-construction. He sent us the data (common for us (DOT) to do this), it was in our region. Long story short, the boulder was not in its original location anymore. The old narrow gravel road was now much wider with ditch, We found the mark was like this one, sitting on top of the ground where the description indicated is was partially exposed. It was clearly evident it had been pushed to its current location some time in the past during brush clearing/road maintenance etc. We still transferred the elevation per his request and leveled a mile in each direction to tie to other marks in the level line and provided him the evidence of what we found.

USGS date sheets for my area and the mark I showed can be found here ►USGS Datasheets: Michigan

I have found some around here dated the early 1900's and in addition to the U.S. Geological Survey moniker, the words "IN COOPERATION WITH THE STATE OF" in on the pipe cap.

https://www.photolib.noaa.gov/cgs/index.html

Measuring Base Lines was a huge task of its own, special crews just to do that back in da days.. Base line measurement party. Triangulation party of Carl Aslakson Graded road made to measure Epping Plains Base. Base Line party of Alexander Dallas Bache

fyi........................................

There is no difference, all railroad property is right of way and the same goes for highways. You have no idea what other dangers are there, gas lines for instance, buried cables. I worked 30 yrs for the DOT as a Survey Technician and even for us to go upon RR property, we were required to notify the RR dispatch and get the OK. With today's nature of things most RR's have patrols out ahead of the trains and if they see you, they will not hesitate to call authorities and they don't give warnings, its a federal statute. You might not think a buried cable can't get you in trouble? I know a surveyor for local county highway dept who would tell you otherwise. They were doing some road once along county road. All the utilities were supposed to be located and marked. An piece of equipment accident hit a cable and within minutes police from the nearby Air Force (SAC) descended upon them in full force. He said there is nothing like having a boot in the middle of your back and M16 pointed to the back of your head with your face on the ground. Someone messed with the marking so as to cause problems, they cut the major communication cable to the base which was a top secret location. Nevertheless it took the better part of the day before they were released from custody once the USAF police were confident they were not sabatouers, the USAF police take the job extremely serious and so does the RR. They might shoot first, and ask questions later. LOL

Triangulation Diagram https://beta.ngs.noaa.gov/gcd/ Note - Some have LOT with the name, that stands for; LookOut Tower. Manned 'forest fire' watch stations of the day.

Also note that USGS does not maintain any electronic database for old survey marks. They are all in a paper format and require "hands on" file searching so provide them all the info you can such as latitude, longitude, state, county, nearest town and what's stamped on the disk, of where you found the mark. Lat and Long being the most important. Due to the many field crews and time span (decades) of the field work often stampings on the disk were duplicated so more than one could have the same stamping. Seen it in my area several times. I recall once at the DOT back in the 1990's we got a report on a auto accident that damaged a survey mark. My boss dug out the data USGS sheets (from our files) and told me to check it out. I also checked the NGS database and found there was another mark with the same designation about 100 miles in the opposite direction, so 2 marks with same name but different years. The police report just gave us the location and the name U.S. Geological Survey. They wanted to know the value of the survey mark for their property damage report.

I'll pass on some tidbit I got from a state NGS advisor many years (>20) ago. Not Found is sometimes a misnomer. He told me that it could also mean it was not even looked for. He mentioned USGS work in which they submitted a recovery list of marks they used in the mapping project along with all the other marks in the project area they were supplied by NGS. The person(s) who inputted the info (clerical staff) at the time (could have been yrs later) assumed the rest on the list of marks (that were not used) were not found. When in reality they never even looked because they did not need them. Even NGS crews did this back in the day when office staff did the paperwork. That would explain why with some marks labeled as not found are in plain sight.

1937 might not be a year but the Land Surveyor' state license number. Common for LS to place their state license number on mark they set as part of a contracted survey.

I recall years ago one of our DOT licensed surveyors got in big trouble digging for a buried land corner is a historical area of Detroit, for a highway project. There is state law that allows surveyors to go upon private land to locate boundary markers but it does not cover federal land, He nearly went to jail over the incident and had his/state equipment confiscated.

I would go seek out the high point and see if I could stumble upon it. I recall a few years back I was riding ATV's with some friends in an area I had never been. We followed an old trail to the top of the hill and there was a lot bare rock outcrop. Anyway, as we were taking in the sites I was talking about how USGS/USC&GS often placed survey markers on these high points. So we started walking around and suddenly one of the ladies said, is this one? Sure enough it was USC&GS/NGS Reference Mark set in 1939 in the rock ledge. We never did find the station mark and we looked it up on the phone and found out it was not found (NGS) some 30 yrs back, only hole in outcrop remained but there was so much ground cover now we did not look for it.

Sale would include some other legal form of compensation, stock in corp. for instance. Seen that several times (*researching ownership for hwy projects) when big box stores buy land, Walmart for instance. Someone can avoid paying thousands if not millions of $ in transfer taxes. Also the seller can defray paying capital gains tax as well as keep the sale price from public knowledge in the official records. *One sale I recall where Walmart purchased a large track of land for only $1 and other just compensation. Note - To avoid paying taxes is legal, to evade is not.

Yds is not an acceptable survey measurement and I was surprised they had it programmed to convert. Only uses for yds are football and hunters seem to always speak in yards although I often wonder if they really know what it is. Never seen anything that measures in yards in my 30 yrs as a Survey Tech at MDOT. We always measured in meters and feet and compared the results.

Because 120 yds is not precise..

This has always been the case, the system is programed to make the conversion. NGS field crews have worked in meters for a very long time, more precise. Back in the 1970's when we did coop work with NGS all measurements were metric and then converted to feet when published, never yards.

That way leaves open the chance of blunders. If we could not find a suitable BM to set up on and had to use the one in a bldg. for vertical control, we would just set a new control point in the open and carry the elevation (double run) to the new point and use that new elevation to constrain our network. Done that many times but we were only using the data for our projects. GPS was not good enough for elevations on our projects back then so we ran digital levels. Many projects we only provided horizontal (project datum) control but required the consultant to provide the elevation control for mapping and plans. Since OPUS was just coming of age back circa 2002 my boss (old school PS) was skeptical and would process the survey with our Leica software. After a year of him spending days doing what OPUS did in 2 min he finally conceded OPUS was better and saved time. But as I said, at the time we were only charged with providing data for our project control. My boss and I took early retirement from the DOT in 2002.

I have noticed some recovery reports by Geocaching enthusiasts that are improperly reporting marks set vertically in buildings as "SUITABLE FOR GPS". Suitable for GPS means that a surveyor can occupy the point with a clear vision of the sky from 20° (for 360°) above the horizon so as to be able to collect data with a tripod or bipod setup. A mark set vertically in the wall of a building or other structure IS NOT suitable for GPS.

Not on their priority list for sure...

Nails are typically work points. MAG nail is a brand of magnetic (for surveyors use) masonry nail, another is PK (Parker-Kalon). Actually the PK nails never had a center point but they found out surveyors used them so much they started to make with a defined center point. At the DOT we used these for all construction lay out, centerline alignment points, bench marks, traverse points etc for project work. We had brass tags about the size of quarter we often put the blank side up. I seen professional surveyors use similar with the license number, name etc to mark one of their control points or witness. In short, mostly used as work point, cost effective. I seen them used by non-surveyors to mark important locations, police accident reconstruction for instance or builders. PS-When we used flagging with the nail we called it "gift wrapping".