Perplexing station - your thoughts please

[ArtMan]

Despite a still-healing broken foot, I had to take advantage of today’s excellent fall weather for a bit of benchmarking, but I admit to being stumped by one station I visited. HV2733 is located at the Fairfax County (VA) courthouse and is a 1960 USGS reset. The datasheet indicates - in three separate places - that this disk is stamped, but two previous benchmarkers have logged this mark and posted photographs of an unstamped disk.

 

The disk in question appears less than 40 years old; it appears to be made of aluminum - or at least it is aluminum-colored - and perhaps one of our professional colleagues can tell is if that material was in use in 1960.

 

The datasheet seems to be inconsistent. The history begins with a 1952 description, which is supposed to be the year it was monumented. While the predecessor disk may have been placed at that time, the reset was done in 1960. Possibly it was reset in the exact same location as the prior disk, but I wonder: in 1952 the placement was described as “on the courthouse lawn ... in the concrete apron,” whereas in 1960 it was “in the top of the west edge of the steps.”

 

The unstamped disk is at the top of the stairs, set into what appears to be very old stonework (not concrete). There is some relatively new concrete in the area at the top of the steps; so possibly this disk is a post-1960 reset. Hmmm.

 

Thank you for your thoughts.