Confidence Destroyed

[Photobuff]

I just put several days into not locating NB0910. Checked coordinates on topo maps and looked at aerial photos. Dug a long trench parallel to the road, as all the original landmarks are missing, and only the general location is known. Found what appears to be the remains of the concrete pouring for the marker post at the correct coordinates. Photos in my log. No benchmark. Searched the general area with probe rod and metal detector to no avail. I was highly confident that the mark was missing/destroyed. When I went to do a not-found log at the NGS site, I downloaded a fresh copy of the datasheet. On the new copy, the USPS claims to have found the thing in 2002. IMO, it's near impossible that any work was done in that area over the last 3-4 years. I'm going to contact the local highway dept and see if they have any recollection. I just find it hard to believe I'm in the wrong spot, hard to believe it was recently destroyed, hard to believe the USPS found it, and hard to believe they found something else. Thoughts and comments?

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

The description says 68' east of the corner of the house.

 

You posted "I overestimated the size of the house a bit, but about 12' along the dig, I came across the damaged remains of a concrete pouring that once held a 4"x4" post."

 

What happened to the other 56 feet?

 

John

[Photobuff]

The distance from the road establishes a line parallel to the road. The distance from the missing house determines the point on the line parallel to the road where the mark should be. Since I couldn't be sure where to start digging, I started somewhat further south than the expected coordinates, and worked my way north along the parallel line. At the point where the pouring was found, the distance to where the house would have been was 68'. The distance along my "big dig" was about 12', i.e., I had a 12' long trench parallel to the road and about 68' from the debris field of the house. I just didn't use as many words in my log!

[Bill93]

You've worked harder than most people on this one. My armchair ideas:

 

Does it look like that concrete is in the original position? Being damaged, I wonder if it got moved a few feet by grading.

 

It looks like they picked the spot to put the mark based on the house corner. I would do everything I could to identify the lines of the house and rely heavily on the distance from that corner, regardless of where the concrete was found unless you are sure it is undisturbed.

 

Does it look like the house sat parallel to the road? Is there any possibility that the northeast corner looked "east" to the guy writing the description? Note that he said to go "north" on the road that really goes NNW, so if the NE corner was closer to the road that is what he would measure from even if it were truly not the most eastern spot. Were there other marker posts?

 

After you get done thinking about it and decide you are really done, you have a well-earned NGS Not Found. In your report, tell that you found remains of the house, remains of the post, give distance from road, used metal detector, etc. so that anyone searching in the future knows how hard you tried and what evidence existed.

[Photobuff]

One more idea occurs to me. Though I looked there before, it's possible the mark is on the other side (north) of the house. The description only says "east corner", so really, both east most sides qualify. I can't say for sure how the house faced, and there isn't enough left to even find the foundation. That would, however, put it near the original driveway of the house. I have a couple hours before the weather turns terrible to take a quick look, but the snow has started. I want this one badly, because it completes the set on the road I live on, but if it isn't there, it isn't there.

[+jwahl]

There are some confusing elements that you have probably considered.

 

1) The road direction is just west of north maybe N. 20d W., the call is 68' East of the East corner of an abandoned brick building. I would at first take that to mean east and not in a direction along the road but more toward the road. The quad has the structure far enough away from the road for that to still fit.

 

2) the call for being just East of a telephone pole. Is there anything like that in the area?

 

There can be concrete around a lot of things, mailbox posts, etc.

 

I know there is always some ambiguity about directions in descriptions. It might be useful to check the description of another mark along the same line north or south and see how the terms East are used, along the road or basically map east.

 

- jlw

[Photobuff]

Well, I just took a quick poke and scan on the north side of the area, but found nothing. The weather is now too horrible to do a good job, so maybe when it warms up and stops blowing. The elevation of the ground compared to the road on that side doesn't match up well with the height of the mark. I know from the marks down the road about how much things have been built up, and it isn't a lot, though there are a couple spots that are still possible. I do think I've over-thought some of these location descriptions in the past. It's actually very simple. When they say the benchmark 68' east, they still mean the straight line distance between the two objects, not to go along some heading, then make a turn. The simple interpretation is consistant with other marks on the road, certainly set by the same crew. Running a tape from the corner of the house directly to the benchmark will be 68'. Doing it any other way would have been more work and serve no purpose.

 

I'm confident the road hasn't moved, so the mark has to be on one side of the missing house or the other- unless the locals are completely wrong about the location of the house! OTOH, the "X" on the topo map is almost exactly where I found the pouring for the marker post.

 

One reason I have no confidence is that I can't think of a reason why anyone would come along and remove the monument. If it was there for 60 years (assuming the USPS really did find it in 2002) and the area has no recent construction activity, why should anyone bother it? If someone did go to the trouble to pull the monument, why didn't they pull the much smaller chunk of cement that held the marker post? Also, I hadn't mentioned it before, but I found a piece of concrete buried where I think the monument should have been, with a smooth side that easily could have been part of a monument- or part of the house? One thing I suspect about monuments around here is that they're much shorter than they should be, thus easier to remove. The adjusted station down the road is significantly tilted- you can see it when driving by in the car. Another missing mark over in nearby Victor can't have had a monument more than a foot or so tall, as it appears to have been sitting on a bed of shale a foot below the surface. I think about this stuff way too much.

[Bill93]

If I felt like digging, I'd take a real good look at all faces I could reach on that chunk of smooth concrete. If they did much grading when working on the road, that could indeed be the benchmark's post. I just found a broken-off post with disk MH0137 last month that you should compare to M 155. In my case, it was one of the 1935 precast posts that are pretty fragile. Is your 1942 series similar? One of the fatter ones could have be disturbed by grading, as well.

 

While the 2002 report shows they found something, but if there are no notes other than a "Found" then I wouldn't rule out it having been the wrong thing.

[holograph]

It looks to me like there are two candidates for the location of the old building. I don't know which area you've been searching, but you might try the other. The northern clearing, which is closest to the scaled coordinates, doesn't look large enough to hold a building that might have an "east" corner 68 feet west of the line that lies 28 feet west of the centerline.

 

The southern clearing looks like a better candidate for such a building.

 

I drew in the line that is 28 feet west of the centerline, and two possible buildings with a 68 foot radius around a hypothetical "east" corner.

 

[Photobuff]

Jim- that's one fine piece of work! I do exactly the same thing, but the quality of the aerials from the Terraserver isn't as good. Where'd that image come from?

 

IMO, the northern site is the only possibility, as that's where the locals say the brick house/building was, and I did find bricks on the site. My thinking is that the corner of the house used would be the closest corner to the benchmark, as there would be no reason to do otherwise. However, both corners of the house qualify as east, so one would draw two circles of 68' radius, and search both north and south of the house. Not trusting anything, I've searched the entire stretch of road, though I only dug a serious trench on the south side. My logic was that the mark on the topo map was on the south side of the building/house. I'm pretty sure that's also consistent with the 1.9 miles from the rr station in Rushville. I drove it way back, but should also check the distance on the aerial photos.

 

As for the concrete piece, it's just a loose fragment.

[+ddnutzy]

Photobuff,

Since it is scaled, the discription is what you have to work with which states that the station is 28 feet west of the c/l of the road and 68 feet east of the east corner of the brick building. That looks like it would place the station about 60-70 feet north of the area where you were digging right between the building and the road. I would set up a point on each end of the building 68 feet east then I'd measure 28 feet from the road and see which end was the closest to the 28 foot mark. Then I would work on that area first with a metal detector and a probe. If I didn't find it there I'd use the detector 68 feet the whole length of the building. The 68 foot measurement would be the one to work off of since the road could have changed over the years.

 

Dave

[+PFF]

Photobuff:

 

You get a Gold Star for effort!

 

The coordinates on the topo map match what you got in the field:

 

42.78311N GPS

42.7830 TOPO MAP

 

77.23541W GPS

77.2355 TOPO MAP

 

As for the continued reporting by USPSQD....well, these things happen. [grin]

 

Sunday morning, I'm checking FY1854 for a 2nd time. USPSQD claims to have seen it in May, 2004. When I did not find it last week, I pulled the records from NCGS and saw it was listed as destroyed in 1987--which is about the same time the road was widened.

 

I don't mind checking again, since I was going to use FY1854 to log two 1898 Meridian Posts that NCGS has been looking for, and which I recovered in a nearby cemetery. (Note to self: Get back to recovering PID's that count on Holograph's statistics page!) If FY1854 is there, I'll come back to the thread and praise the Pwr Squadron.

 

But don't hold your breath......

 

-Paul-

[holograph]

Photobuff,

 

That image is from New York's GIS clearinghouse. It is a 2-foot resolution panchromatic orthoimage. New York also has limited coverage at 1 foot resolution color. You will need some kind of way to georeference the images: before I obtained a GIS, I used to load such images into PaintShop Pro and externally compute the geographic location of the pixels (a spreadsheet that converted to and from State Plane Coordinates was handy).

 

You can find the images at the New York GIS Clearinghouse. Several states have similar orthophoto libraries available online. I use New Jersey's statewide 1-foot resolution images quite often.

 

It's much better resolution than is available through Google or Terraserver.

 

edit: P.S. - I've found that most rural roads in the 40's were narrow dirt roads, and when they were paved, the centerline was often changed. They weren't always widened symmetrically, sometimes the old centerline falls in the middle of one of today's lanes.

Edited January 15, 2006 by holograph

[+jwahl]

Unless I misread the data sheet, no one has responded to the thing being right next to a telephone pole

 

TO REACH FROM THE LEHIGH VALLEY RAILROAD STATION IN RUSHVILLE--

PROCEED 1.9 MILES NORTH ON AN IMPROVED ROAD, TO SITE OF BENCH

MARK. BENCH MARK IS 68.0 FEET EAST OF THE EAST CORNER OF AN

ABANDONED BRICK BUILDING, 28.0 FEET WEST OF AND ABOUT 1.0 FOOT

ABOVE THE CENTERLINE OF ROAD AND 2.0 FEET EAST OF A TELEPHONE

POLE. IT IS 2.0 FEET NORTH OF A 4X4 INCH WOODEN MARKER POST.

MONUMENT PROJECTS 0.4 FOOT.

 

There is high resolution photography available from NYS

 

NYS Ortho Imagery

 

The 2002 stuff is 2 foot and identical to what was just posted. There is also 1998 Color, fairly low resolution.

 

It appears from the shadows that there are power poles on the East side of the road. A telephone line or pole could have been to provide lines to the structure, whatever it was. If the pole was torn out, another possibility is that the mark may have been damaged or removed also. However the dates are problematic. If UPSQ really found it in 2002, some or all of this imagery is of that date or earlier, the pole should show.

 

The area appears to be on the edge of cultivated area which varies in appearance in each set of imagery I can find. It is possible the mark was damaged or destroyed by farming activity, however the later images appear to show cultivation 'around' and excluding the site and not over it.

 

Trees often grow up around old houses, schools, buildings, etc. and so the clump of vegetation shown in the pictures is consistent, it is just hard to see clearly in all the ortho's. Virtual work like this can be useful, but sometimes difficult. If it were able to see the same clump of vegetation in the ortho's we could probably predict the building footprint and measure the 68 feet and see where that fits the road, but that is going to be less definitive than on the ground debris unless we find photography that shows the building more intact.

 

In the later images, an area north of the trees appears almost fenced off. So there is also the possibility that the main structure was there and the location with the trees and brick debris is an outbuilding or dump area.

 

Like I say, virtual work and speculation leaves a lot to be desired and most of those thoughts can be quickly dispelled by 10 minutes on the ground.

 

- jlw

 

There are sources of agricultural photography, that go way back, I don't remember the link, but I will try to track it down.

 

(not online here)

 

APFO source

 

I am checking other sources now.

 

USGS shows a number of images, but again they have to be ordered.

 

Ontario County shows ability to order imagery back to 1969.

Edited January 15, 2006 by jwahl

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

Before deciding whether or not the mark is gone. I would start at the train station and drive 1.9 miles north on both roads, the County road that bears left at the "Y" and Middle road which goes straight north at the "Y".

 

The train station should be easy to locate as they are right at the railroad tracks. This is the only solid starting point given. Go north 1.9 miles plus or minus 265 feet and see what is there that matches the description.

 

The X on the map is just a guideline, did they measure along the wrong road and then put the mark on the map for that benchmark?

 

John

[Photobuff]

On further thought, there isn't much that's inconsistant, except for the fact that I can't find the benchmark! The debris field is known to a nearby farmer as the site of the "Flynn House", which was a brick house. I don't know the location of the RR station in town, but the distance is consistent with the next mark up the road, K155. As for errors, anything is possible, but the reason I wanted to find this, is it's part of the "155" series that runs up my road. H155 was at the bottom of my road, 4.9 miles from Rushville, in a cement bridge. The bridge was replaced in 1994, though the USPS "recovered" the benchmark in 1995! J155 is the one I recovered recently, at 3.9 miles from Rushville, and near my house. K155 is an adjusted "HARNS?" station at 2.9 miles from Rushville. L155 is my mystery mark at 1.9 miles from Rushville, and M155, also recovered, is at 0.9 miles from Rushville. It's just such a nice series, with everything at 1 mile intervals, and most of them still there. Measured on an aerial photo, everything is where it ought to be, and I'm looking in exactly the right spot. Come warm weather, I'll poke around some more, and over the winter I'll do a bit more research. (the phone poles are long gone- I think power is on the other side of the road now)

 

BTW, you guys are beyond wonderful. You obviously love the scent of a missing mark as much as I do.

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

If you were looking in "Exactly" the right spot then you would have found it!

 

Famous last words?

 

John

Edited January 15, 2006 by 2oldfarts (the rockhounders)

[+jwahl]

If your guard post concrete is the remains of the actual guard post, there should be some evidence of a hole 2 feet north of it where the mark was. Unless it was set very shallow. And then there should definitely some evidence of the telephone pole west of that 2 feet.

 

Typically posts or poles or the holes they came out of leave some kind of variation in the color or composition of the soil that can be seen as you dig carefully down through layers of more recent layers of vegetation soil and debris. A telephone pole would be set at leat 4 feet in the ground would leave behind a good opportunity to find some indication.

 

- jlw

[Photobuff]

I'm hopeless; can't leave it alone. A 1902 topo map does show two structures, one a bit south from the one I've been concentrating on. Good call on the diagram previously posted! Today I went back and used the probe and detector for a couple tenths of a mile, covering north and south of both sites, and all the space in the middle. Nothing, though I did dig up some beer cans and other debris. I'm near ready to call it quits, but there's one other piece of information available- the elevation. Since the mark is on the edge of a hill, if I could determine the elevation exactly, I could narrow the search area to one site or the other. I did a rough check today with low error and WAAS, and it suggests the first site is the correct one. I need to do a lot of averaging to prove it though. Here's a couple questions:

 

1) Did they even use cement around the marker posts? I suppose I could go dig at the marker post location for other marks on this road and see if I find something similar. Note that there are zero surviving marker posts around here, nor have I ever seen a metal or plastic survey make sign.

 

2) What's the typical life of a phone pole? Most of the poles in the area look recent, but one or two could possibly be from the '40s. This probably isn't relevant, as the poles are gone from both sites, but I'm curious!

 

3) With enough averaging, how good an elevation measurement do you think might be made with a Magellan 210? It's great for horizontal, but everybody says expect at least a factor of two worse for elevation. Is there any other way to do elevation based on benchmarks within a mile?

[Bill93]

In my limited experience, a factor of 2 would be optimistic for vertical vs horizontal accuracy. The vertical component suffers much faster than horizontal when the satellite constellation has few birds spread out from the flock, so you might watch for the very best constellations spread out across the sky to take your readings.

 

The best way to get elevation, for those having the equipment, is to use an engineer's level or transit to run a level line from the next benchmark down the road. That's a lot of work. But if you don't have at least old-generation professional equipment in good calibration, you won't arrive from 2 miles away with useful accuracy.

 

So most of the time you will do best by using the topo map and interpolating between the contour lines. Be sure to use the benchmark elevation in the datum the map was prepared for, in case there was a big datum shift in your area.

[mloser]

If you want to get crazy about GPS accuracy there are a number of predictors that show the positions of satellites and the signal level at any given location at any given time. Since the satellites are not in geostationary orbit there are times when they cluster over areas, or leave areas less well covered. This results in different signal strengths.

 

Start with Navtech's list of GPS Tracking Sites

John Deere has one too.

Another list is at This site.

 

As for concrete around marker posts, my thinking is that the post was not a marker specifically for the benchmark but was some other sort of post and was just a reference point.

 

Around my area telephone poles seem to stay at the same spot for 50 or more years. I have repeatedly used telephone poles exactly as described, even though sometimes the numbering scheme has changed (often remnants of the old numbers remain though) or the pole has been replaced in site. Less often, the poles have been moved a bit. I have seen pole replacements done by setting a new pole a few feet to the side of the old one, then the wires are rehung and the old pole removed.

[Z15]

fyi

 

They used concrete to set the wooden witness post into. Usually you will find a mass of concrete with a 4 in square hole but lower down it could be solid concrete.

Edited January 20, 2006 by Z15