A mixup of two stations going back over a century

[Papa-Bear-NYC]

After doing a fair amount of research, I have concluded that all the recoveries for one station in Nahant, Massachusetts going back to 1894 are actually for another mark.

 

The research shows there were two early 19th century stations established at Nahant.

 

In 1834 Simeon Borden established a station near the high point of the main section of Nahant on what is now Tudor Road, a residential street a few blocks northeast of the police station. This had PID MY4691, Designation "NAHANT BORDEN 1834", and the datasheet is non-published.

 

In 1846 C.O, Boutelle established a mark at the far end of the peninsula in an area later used during World War II for gun emplacements. Boutelle was an assistant to Borden and later worked for Bache, the director of the CGS in the late 1840s. This is station is MY4736 "NAHANT 1846" which has a published datasheet and recoveries dating from 1894 to 1984. Unfortunately all these recoveries appear to be for the Borden station.

 

Here are the descriptions for these two marks from Special Publication No. 76 "Triangulation in Massachusetts" (1922):

 

 

And here is a sketch of the triangulation stations from the area from the same publication:

 

 

Notice the Borden station is up in the main section and Nahant1 & 2 are down on the point. Nahant 1 is what is now called NAHANT 1846 and Nahant 2 is a mark mentioned as being set nearby in 1860.

 

When I decided to look for this station, I first checked my database for Essex county, MA and looked for old stations. One such was NAHANT 1846. Then I checked the NGS datasheet recovery site and searched for "NAHANT" and found not only NAHANT 1846, and assorted church steeples, but also NAHANT BORDEN 1834. But NAHANT BORDEN was non-published:

 

 

Notice the code is "D" which means "No Descriptive Text Available".

 

So I said to myself, now that's peculiar, the text was clearly published in the 1922 special Publication. Maybe someone just missed it and I can call attention to this and the NGS will fix it.

 

Well, the reality was stranger. First off, looking at the aerial views for station NAHANT 1846, showed a barren area on cliffs overlooking Boston Harbor. No streets, no houses, nothing. Then I read the recovery logs for NAHANT 1846 more carefully and what do I find: the 1894 recovery log is actually the original description for the Borden station. Notice this from the datasheet for NAHANT 1846 and compare to the original descriptions given above:

 

 

The Coup de grâce, as it were, was when I used Google Maps to locate "14 Tudor Rd, Nahant MA" which was the house address from the NAHANT 1846 log of 1933 (try it). What I got is a point up in the main part of Nahant, no where near the adjusted location of NAHANT 1846. In fact it looks like it's up where the Borden station is located from that old sketch.

 

The last step was to convert the old 1901 datum locations for the two stations to NAD83 and see exactly where NAHANT BORDEN 1834 is. Sure enough, it' right on the east side of Tudor Road, across from No. 14. And when we went there, sure enough there was a fire hydrant just were they said it was in 1933 and 1958.

 

Unfortunately, measuring from the fire hydrant put the mark under some guy's front lawn and he wasn't home to ask (we'll go back). Here a photo of the site:

 

So what to do?

 

At this point the evidence from both the text and the locations are that sometime in the past, the Borden station description and 1894 recovery were put into Nahant 1846's file folder, or whatever they used before computers. So Nahant Borden never got published (since it's description was absconded) and every recovery of Nahant 1846 from 1894 on were actually for the Borden station. And Nahant 1846 has in fact never been recovered.

 

And unfortunately, I think it never will be. When we visited the location we found concrete structures built during WW II for the gun emplacements to protect Boston Harbor have probably obliterated the station. Here's the scene:

 

 

GPS readings put the station right where that concrete is.

 

So I would ask the NGS guys, DaveD and NGS Surveyor, to study the evidence here and (assuming they agree with my thesis) do the following:

 

1) remove all recoveries from 1894 to 1984 from NAHANT 1846.

2) put all those recoveries into the datasheet for NAHANT BORDEN 1834

3) set the monumentation date for NAHANT BORDEN 1834 and set it publishable

 

Thanks

Edited April 29, 2009 by Papa-Bear-NYC

[Difficult Run]

PapaBear - I am always amazed at the depth of your research and expertise.

 

~ Mitch ~

[Papa-Bear-NYC]

Today I checked the NGS datasheets on these two stations - horray! The two datasheets now have the correct recoveries.

 

MY4691 "NAHANT BORDEN 1834"

 

Is now published and has all the recoveries that rightfully belong to it. When we go back to Tudor Rd, we will (hopefully) find this 1834 Borden station. There will unfortunately be no GC recovery possible since this datasheet was not published when GC got its copy of the database.

 

 

MY4736 "NAHANT 1846"

 

Down on the point amid the WW II gun emplacements. We'll go back and look again, but alas I fear the area has been dug up and interlaced with underground concrete structures. A shame for this historic C. O. Boutelle station. Of course the GC entry for this station will continue to show the old erroneous datasheet. Whatever!

 

Thanks very much to the anonymous but ever capable NGS "database guy" who fixes these things. And thanks to George and Dave for helping me out in my search for these oldies.