Thompson Boundary Monument

[lost02]

Does anyone know what a “Thompson Boundary Monument” is supposed to look like?

[CallawayMT]

Does anyone know what a “Thompson Boundary Monument” is supposed to look like?

 

A little more info would help. What are you referring to? Where is the Thompson Boundary? What kind of boundary is it? Where did you find reference to the "Thompson Boundary Monument? You have my interest.

I always ejoy a good boundary line search.

 

CallawayMT

[lost02]

CallawayMT - Unfortunately there’s no description of the monument (I guess everyone back then knew what they looked like) – take a look here ET1042. We did find the poor remains of ET1045 (again no description), and RABBIT - ET1046 referrers to ET1045 as a Thompson Boundary Monument. I was wondering what they looked like when they were monumented. I did a search but couldn’t find anything specific (like what they looked like).

[CallawayMT]

CallawayMT - Unfortunately there’s no description of the monument (I guess everyone back then knew what they looked like) – take a look here ET1042. We did find the poor remains of ET1045 (again no description), and RABBIT - ET1046 referrers to ET1045 as a Thompson Boundary Monument. I was wondering what they looked like when they were monumented. I did a search but couldn’t find anything specific (like what they looked like).

 

Now we are starting to get somewhere, maybe not what you are wanting, but it appears to me that this is a boundary survey between Maricopa and Yavapai Counties. I am guessing that Thompson performed the survey in 1924 or possibly earlier. The reason I say this is because of the Initial Point data sheet: Initial Point for Maricopa and Yavapai Counties

You still have my interest and I will be checking some more sources.

 

CallawayMT

[lost02]

CallawayMT – thanks for the update. I added our log (with photos) to ET1045. The actual monument looks like a stone instead of concrete – especially with the drill hole in the middle. I'm assuming there was some sort of disk on top that indicated it was Monument #3.

[+Kewaneh & Shark]

There are many parts of the country that have, in years past, had a prominent surveyor in the area when that area was developing and growing. The surveyor may have been the County Surveyor, a surveyor appointed by the State or regional government, or a private surveyor who worked extensively in marking the boundaries of private land holdings, public lands (PLSS), and government jurisdictions.

 

When the country was developing, the standards used to identify a surveyed point or boundary corner or line were few and far between. There were (and are) standards for corner identification when surveying the Public Lands (such as cairns, marked rocks, and pits & mounds), but those standards were not always applicable on more local levels for smaller surveys. Surveyors were often left to their own ingenuity for corner identification, and often they settled for a small pile of rocks or wooden stake. Obviously, marks of this type, while they served their purpose in the moment, did little for future retracement as they were often moved, misidentified, or otherwise destroyed. Some surveyors opted for a more permanent solution for the task, either by design or luck. They used well marked stone columns, capped cast iron pipes & pins, or other objects that have weathered the test of time. These designs were often used exclusively by one surveyor and often become known simply as a monument named after they surveyor.

 

In my area, we have such a surveyor and he had such a monument; his marks are known in the area as McKay monuments. Scott McKay was the County Surveyor in the first part of the 20th century. He did a lot of work for the County in subdivisions and resurveys of the Public Lands. He commonly marked PLSS corners and other large surveys with 4" iron pipes topped with a cast iron cap. The cap usually had a square nut in the center and often had 'Fresno County Surveyor' or his name in large raised letters on it.

Link to BIG PIC

 

This does not explain what a Thompson Boundary Monument looks like, but it may explain how it got it's name. The term would have been used in the description with the assumption that local surveyors, who knew what a Thompson Boundary Monument is (not recreational benchmark hunters), would be the ones reading the description to look for the mark.

 

Be sure to post pics when you find it.

 

- Kewaneh

[lost02]

Kewaneh - thanks for the info. I guess if were were around in the 20's we would know good old Thompson too. Here's the one we found ( ET1045 - it appears to have seen better days):

 

We'll be doing a little research and probably make more visits.

[+Klemmer]

Lost02:

Very sparse description of the marks, for sure. I recently recovered Tri station DX3844 in SoCal, set in 1932, that has "bronze pins" used as Reference Marks (RM's) that somewhat resemble your mystery markers. They are in a fairly arid area, and are very well preserved. Maybe that's what you have there, rather than stems left from a semi-destroyed disc type marker.

 

[lost02]

K&T – thanks for info. Your RMs look a lot like this RM (from CZ2166):

 

Here’s a close up of ET1045.

 

The top is kinda ragged with a smooth section to the left. It’s also a square peg (in a round hole ). The top could be what was monumented, but it really looks pretty “sloppy”.

[+Klemmer]

Hmmm... yeah, I've seen a few square pegs in round holes. Oh, and as benchmarks, too!

With the closeup view, it looks more like, well, ROUGH, like you said. Is that a little "dimple" in the middle from surveyor using it? Hmmm... hard to really say what's up with it, huh?

[AZcachemeister]

After reading this thread soon after it posted, I was intrigued (and enticed) to visit the area in hopes of answering some questions. Last weekend, I believe I visited and recovered five of these monuments, but there may be more questions raised than answered.

 

The saga begins innocently enough at DV1906 BOUNDARY COR 1 MARICOPA YAVAPAI

 

 

This monument set the basic style of all the 'Thompson' and/or Maricopa/Yavapai county boundary monuments I visited over the weekend. i.e. a pipe with a concrete triangular pyramid base, with bronze plaques in all three sides of the base.

 

They all appear to have been set in 1924, and in the same year, the CGS came out and monumented 'regular' benchmark disks nearby some/most/all of the monuments. Apparently the locations of some/most of the boundary monuments were also determined at that time, and those monuments were listed as CGS benchmarks.

 

Now things start to get 'interesting'.

 

The next CGS disk east of ET1052 INITIAL MONUMENT, is ET1049 CACTUS, and the 1955 recovery note of that mark mentions a boundary monument 255 Ft. to the south. Regrettably, I did not go looking for this monument, and apparently the CGS didn't either.

 

Next in line, we have ET1044 FENCE. The 1924 monumentation note says the boundary monument ET1042 THOMPSON MONUMENT 2

is 49 ft. to the east. Myself and lost02 can confidently assert that there is no monument there, but the 1985 recovery note by AZDT says there is one 181 Ft to the southeast, which I photographed.

 

 

Just down the road are ET1046 RABBIT and ET1045 THOMPSON MONUMENT 3. Once again, the co-ordinates and distance of the Thompson monument are apparently way off. Although I didn't measure the actual distance, I can say that the boundary monument was at least 100 Ft. south of ET1046.

 

So, the big question is: Why the apparent HUGE discrepancies?

Possible answers.

1) The monuments I found and photographed were not Thompson Boundary monuments.

2) There were two monumentation groups in the area in 1924, the CGS came first, and was told where the Thompson monuments would be placed, only they were placed elsewhere by the cadastral team.

3) There were two monumentation groups in the area in 1924, and the CGS came second, but they didn't respect the cadastral team's results and listed the numbers for where they thought the Boundary monuments SHOULD HAVE been placed, regardless of where they actually were placed.

4)???

Edited May 5, 2007 by AZcachemeister

[+Klemmer]

Just for kicks, I plugged in Thompson Boundary Marker into a couple different earch engines (OK, it was a slow evening!), and came up with THIS .

 

Thompson is a fairly common name, but I wonder if there might be a connection between a famous cartographer / geographer / surveyor and these monuments. The time frame and the locations don't really match, but there are many links to other stories, etc about Thompson, like this one.

 

I'm thinking that the TYPE of monument, or the method(s) used to locate them were considered pioneered by Thompson, perhaps his astronomical observation techniques, which are mentioned in several places.

 

HERE. is another link more pointed tward the technical details he was (I guess) pioneeering.

 

Just food for thought / further digging err... research if someone is so inclined. Seems so coincidental....

 

[edited to add the third link]

Edited May 5, 2007 by Klemmer & TeddyBearMama

[lost02]

AZcachemeister – thanks for the information and pictures – you sure get around! We’ve talked a little about this issue and I have some added thoughts.

 

As you said, at the adjusted coordinates for ET1042, there isn’t any visible monument. We did some simple probing for something, and it sounds like you did a little more, but still nothing. If you use a projection tool, and plug in the coordinates of FENCE and the distance in the datasheet from ET1042, you get the coordinates for ET1042, so it seems that at least the limited description in ET1042 is correct. Unfortunately they didn’t describe what the monument actually looked like. Another interesting point is that in the initial description for FENCE in 1924 they identified THOMPSON BOUNDARY MONUMENT NO. 2, and then in 1962 they started to identify COUNTY MONUMENT 3 and THOMPSON BOUNDARY MONUMENT NUMBER 3 (which they state are at a different location then #2), and they stop referencing Monument #2.

 

RABBIT and ET1045 are similar, but a little more interesting, because we both found a metal spike in a drill hole at exactly where it was described in ET1045 (we used a measuring tape to verify the distance).

 

1) I think you found and took pictures of boundary monuments with the current designation of #3 and #4.

 

Note1: If the Designation for ET1042 was something like POST, and the Designation for ET1045 was HOLE, then there probably wouldn’t be an issue. I think there only reason there is an issue is because of the designation “THOMPSON MONUMENT” and there are THOMPSON MONUMENTS in the area.

 

Note2: If Monument #3 is ET1042, and Monument #4 is ET1045, then wouldn’t the datasheets for ET1042 and ET1045 be completely erroneous? The Designation would be wrong (wrong monument number), the adjusted coordinates would be wrong, and the description would be wrong (they reference a distance and direction to FENCE and RABBIT, which would be wrong).

 

We haven’t made as many recoveries as you, but these two stations have more questions than any we’ve seen.

[+jwahl]

The terminology naming the monuments and the context sounds to me like a specific survey of this county line. Specific surveys are often referred to in this way. For example, 'the carpenter line' on the south boundary of Colorado, versus the Kidder Line.

 

If there are monuments there now that disagree with the ties, then there may have been more than one survey and the other monuments are now gone.

 

This is not uncommon on state and county lines where different attempts may have been made to locate the line or description.

 

Going on that thought I found the following links describing the boundary of Maricopa County.

 

Maricopy County Description

 

Yavapai County

 

Which mention the Thompson survey. It does appear that it is the correct survey. Keep in mind though that there can be really nice monuments from another survey near by in this type of situation that ARE NOT the boundary. Based on the 1924 dates on these, they are probably the Thompson monuments referenced in the descriptions. There can also be monuments of a survey that are NOT accepted for parts of the boundary. An example of that is my previous example of the Carpenter line between Colorado and Oklahoma which is well monumented, but is not the actual state line.

 

Looking at other parts of this state legislative title 11 on counties shows there were dispute resolution processes also. At any rate the counties may have a record which may lay out the history more completely, or it may also be somewhere in the state government.

[AZcachemeister]

Actually, we got out the shovel and did some real digging!

We did the projection, and that is where we dug our hole.

 

I deliberately left out any discussion about the monument numbering. I DID NOT check the engraving on the west side plaques, which give the monument's co-ordinates, and possibly indicate which monument it is. This was my mistake, and apparently one made by professionals in the past. The question is how were the monuments originally numbered? Was DV1906 considered monument #1, or maybe it is monument #0?

 

Joe, I think we have both been subject to a bit of human nature. For ET1045, you found something at the listed cordinates, and for ET1045 and ET1042, I found something reasonably close, that appeared to be an actual monument. I don't think we will ever get a true solution to this question unless Mr. Thompson rises from the grave to give a pronouncement.

 

Although I may have a few more recoveries, nothing in my experience has prepared me for this kind of mystery. Perhaps we can get Papa-Bear-NYC out here to figure this out for us.

Edited May 6, 2007 by AZcachemeister

[lost02]

Actually, we got out the shovel and did some real digging!

We did the projection, and that is where we dug our hole.

I hate digging holes and coming up empty. I think about half the time we come up empty.

 

I don't think we will ever get a true solution to this question unless Mr. Thompson rises from the grave to give a pronouncement.

I bet even Mr. Thompson may not even know the real answer! I think we would have to ask the CGS crew(s).

 

Maybe as jwahl suggested the answer may lie in some records, or as CallawayMT suggested some local surveyors or the County Surveyor may know the history of the monuments out there. I’m just glad that most recoveries aren’t this ambiguous!