Glass Bottle

[+pdxmarathonman]

This benchmark hasn't been found in 70 years!

 

Buried glass bottles. Mouth up.

 

What a hoot!

[youdig]

I have no doubt that that monument would be quite hard to find. However, as a surveyor in southern Utah, I can attest to the fact that many section corners are witnessed by glass buried under the monument. Also, charcoal was an item used by early surveyors to witness original corners too.

[jayhawk999]

While in high school some 50 years ago, I worked one summer on a surveying crew (two boys and a man) laying out a new county farm-to-market road in central Kansas.

To do this, it was and is necesary to tie the survey points to existing "monuments" or other markers. We used section (mile) stones buried during the Public Land Surveys of the 1880s or so.

One of these stones was some 4 feet underground with a broken bottle on it. Apparently the original which had never been disturbed. The surveyor in charge, said it took about a full day to locate and bury each stone marker. To close out the day, the crew would down a pint of whiskey and break the bottle over the stone before finishing the burial.

I wish I had had the presence of mind to save that bottle.