Interesting find

[+genegene]

When I started my new job at an old hydro plant in Vermont and found out it was built in 1910 I thought this place has to have a B.M. somewhere on it. After telling my boss about it and that I would have to keep my eyes open for it he said don't bother I know where it is, It might be what you are looking for. As we toured the place he showed me what looked like a NGS benchmark, and at a quick glance i thought it was one. well a few days later I got a better look at it and It didnt look quite right, so i e-mailed artman and asked him about it and told him I would e-mail him again with a pic and better cords because I could not locate it on the web sight. this is what he wrote back to me ( Gene,

 

I have no real info, but just a guess: the fact that it is stamped

Supreme Court and VT-NH Line Marker suggests to me that there was some

boundary dispute between the two states, a lawsuit was filed, it made

its way to the Supreme Court, and the court ordered that the boundary

be surveyed.

 

After writing that I did a wee bit of Googling and found that was in

fact the case.http://supreme.justia.com/us/290/579/case.html You can

probably find a lot more info about this.

 

I did some research a while back about the VA-MD boundary, which runs

along the Virginia side of the Potomac River. It, too, was the subject

of litigation, and I found a very nice old published volume in our

local library that described the boundary, including all the monuments

that were set at the time. I would imagine a similar document was

created around 1934.

 

Good find! And good luck!

 

-Art- )

 

Thanks to Art I would have never found any of this info out on my own, mostly because I would have known where to look for it. The cords for this marker are near N42 46.356 W072 30.913 its the best I got because when I got near the power plant the GPS went nuts and gave me a +- of 103 ft at its best.

Any one else ever find anything like this before?

 

Edited June 9, 2007 by genegene

[+genegene]

now if i could onyl figure out how to put the pic. in with the topic? never mind i figured it out

Edited June 9, 2007 by genegene

[+elvis3068]

I looked up the court decision you stated. This led me to two things: (1) I think this is VERY cool benchmark, and (2) I know why I avoided law school.

[Papa-Bear-NYC]

The Supreme Court ruling basically said the the boundary goes down the west bank of the Connecticut River, which means NH owns the river.

 

The up side for NH is they own the river.

 

The down side is they also own all the bridges and are responsible for maintenance. What we would call an unanticipated side effect.

 

There are two boundary marks in Essex county VT that got themselves in the NGS database as Bench Marks (vertical control) no less. Pretty strange that a boundary mark, defined by it's (horizontal) position, is a BM. I assume a later survey in the course of a level line used the monument as a mark of convenient to level to. Almost all US-Canada monuments are NGS horizontal stations.

 

The marks I know of are both in Beecher Falls:

 

QH0734 "BOUNDARY REF MON 86"

 

and

 

QH0736 "BOUNDARY REF MON 87"

 

I also found nearby #84 (non-NGS) while I was there:

 

VT-NH Reference Monument 84

(I get extra credit for the fly, NGS or no NGS! )

 

I would guess some of the monuments in other counties may also be NGS stations.

Edited June 10, 2007 by Papa-Bear-NYC

[CallawayMT]

The Supreme Court has been busy.

 

New Mexico - Texas Dispute.

 

CallawayMT

[+Holtie22]

Here are a couple more:

 

 

 

The interesting part is that the mark you found, genegene, because it is on the Vernon Dam, is actually on the State Line, whereas the others depicted here and in PapaBearNYC's post are reference markers to the actual boundary markers, most of which are under water.

 

The Vermont Society of Land Surveyors for many years used to join with the New Hampshire Land Surveyors Association to perambulate this boundary piecemeal in the form of a canoe trip. It would take about 7 years worth of weekend voyages to retrace the entire boundary, after which they would begin again. Haven't done it though, for about 10 years.

Edited June 12, 2007 by Holtie22

[Papa-Bear-NYC]

...

 

The interesting part is that the mark you found, genegene, because it is on the Vernon Dam, is actually on the State Line, whereas the others depicted here and in PapaBearNYC's post are reference markers to the actual boundary markers, most of which are under water.

 

...

Thanks Holtie22 for that information. I wondered about how that disk genegene found could be a Line Marker. A Dam (or a bridge) of course would be a perfect place for one. I had assumed there were no actual boundary markers on the river's edge, since there would be no place to put them. Are there actual markers under water, or are they "virtual" markers with no monuments?

Edited June 12, 2007 by Papa-Bear-NYC

[+Kewaneh & Shark]

... Are there actual markers under water, or are they "virtual" markers with no monuments?

In most cases, the the body of water IS the marker. Generally, property descriptions that use a water body as a property limit are using that water body as a natural monument.

- Kewaneh

[+Holtie22]

...

 

The interesting part is that the mark you found, genegene, because it is on the Vernon Dam, is actually on the State Line, whereas the others depicted here and in PapaBearNYC's post are reference markers to the actual boundary markers, most of which are under water.

 

...

Thanks Holtie22 for that information. I wondered about how that disk genegene found could be a Line Marker. A Dam (or a bridge) of course would be a perfect place for one. I had assumed there were no actual boundary markers on the river's edge, since there would be no place to put them. Are there actual markers under water, or are they "virtual" markers with no monuments?

 

I did some research on this subject which involved obtaining a copy of the Report of the Special Commissioner Appointed to Locate and Mark the Boundary Between the State of Vermont and the State of New Hampshire at the Points Specified Herein. It is dated November 16, 1936. Of the 103 marks set, only 7 are actually on the State Line, and as near as I can tell, only one is under water - that being the so-called "Mud Turtle Monument" at the SW corner of NH and SE corner of VT. I'm going to have to look for that one!

 

The State Line publication is available from the New Hampshire Land Surveyors Association, NHLSA Merchandise, for $33 plus postage. It contains some great information about how the surveying was done, and diagrams for every monument.

[+Holtie22]

I uploaded some pages from the NH-VT Boundary Report to nearby BM pages so you could see some of the info contained therein.

Here is the diagram for the marker found by genegene

 

 

And its Description

 

 

This is the Mud Turtle Monument and description

 

 

[ArtMan]

Holtie22's Boundary Report looks very similar to the Virginia-Maryland volume I described in my note to Genegene, Report on the location of the boundary line along the Potomac River between Virginia and Maryland by Edward Mathews.

 

Boundary marker 58 (BOUNDARY MON 58 DC MD VA (HV1667)) is an oft-visited site in the popular Jones Point park in Alexandria.

 

-ArtMan-

[Papa-Bear-NYC]

More Vermont - New Hampshire boundary markers

 

I was up in the north country last week and bagged a few more of these Vermont-New Hampshire boundary markers, so I thought I'd revive this thread.

 

The first (No. 79) is very near the Columbia covered bridge about 10 miles south of Colebrook NH,. A very pretty setting:

 

 

The next (No. 89) is on the curb of the bridge over Hall's Stream. It references a point (under water) in the center of the stream where it joins the Connecticut River.

 

 

The last two are at the very eastern tip of Vermont where the old 45th parallel meets the Connecticut River. They are reference marks since the point to the the northeast corner of the state at the shore of the river, but they are actually also line markers since the both sit on the old 45th parallel which is the VT-NH border along the north side of this sliver (called the "Gore").

 

Monument 90, on the east side of route 102. There is a disk on top of the granite monument. It's 314 feet from the corner point.

 

 

This in monument 91, on a rock which sits in the water at the west side of the river. Interestingly, it is not at the corner point, but points to it 1 foot further to the east. That point is still on the rock (I measured it) but it's very near the edge and is not marked in any way (chiseled cross, etc.) that I could see.

 

Edited October 24, 2007 by Papa-Bear-NYC

[+GEO*Trailblazer 1]

... Are there actual markers under water, or are they "virtual" markers with no monuments?

In most cases, the the body of water IS the marker. Generally, property descriptions that use a water body as a property limit are using that water body as a natural monument.

- Kewaneh

 

That line is called a meander line.

The body of water meanders.

 

Meander lines are not boundaries but are lines run for the purpose of locating the water boundaries of the tract......