A benchmark in every county?

[ArtMan]

There are approximately 3,200 counties and independent cities in the United States. I wonder if it is a feasible or desireable goal for the benchmarking community to log at least one survey control station in every jurisdiction.

 

I'm not a programmer, so I'm not sure how one would design a system for tracking this.

 

Every benchmark page on this site (and every NGS datasheet) includes the state and county. In addition, I found a file of counties on the Census web site. The file includes lat and long info (though it is unspecified whether this is for the county seat or for the geographic or population center of the county, or for some other location) plus other information. It is in fixed-width columns, so the information can be readily parsed as needed.

 

(This Census list includes the 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico. It also includes independent cities that are not part of a county, e.g. Baltimore, St. Louis and Carson City.)

 

If there is any interest in this - and I think it would be a worthy goal - perhaps one of our more technically-astute Benchmarkers can suggest an approach.

[ArtMan]

I did a little more work on this.

 

As a pilot project, I randomly selected (see methodology below) 105 counties and independent cities and was able to identify 49 of them, or 47%, with logged benchmarks. Because of limits to my methodology for this exercise, it is clear that some unknown additional number of counties would also have have 'found' benchmarks. In other words, we're about halfway there.

 

My conclusion is that it is entirely reasonable to set as a goal the finding and logging of one benchmark in every county in the country. I take heart that some tiny counties already have benchmarks logged, e.g.

 

Donley Co., TX (pop 3,828) - EN0630

Florence Co, WI (pop 5,088) - QM0593

Rice Co., KS (pop 10,761) - JG0124

 

Of course, some - Alaska's remote Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan Census Area is one; tiny Loving Co., TX (pop. 67) is another - that may not be on any Benchmarkers radar anytime soon. But who knows unless we try!

__________

 

(Methodology: From counties listed in alphabetical order, first by state and then by county name, I selected a random number to begin. It was 6. Beginning with the sixth county, I then selected every 30th county. This gave me a universe of 105 jurisdictions. Then, using the coordinates supplied by the Census Bureau, I searched a radius of 10 miles around those coordinates for benchmarks that have been logged as 'found.' In each case, I verified that the 'found' benchmark was in fact in the correct county. By using a 10-mile radius as a proxy for the actual county boundaries, I clearly in some cases failed to identify some 'found' benchmarks in some counties that would be beyond that radius.)

[survey tech]

I would guess that you are right, Art, that there should certainly be at least one NGS marker in existence in every county. Also, do not let the absence of those designated as found influence you. Many locally well known markers are never reported found, because everyone who uses them already knows about them, so reporting is considered pointless, and this is especially true in the most sparsely populated areas.

[ArtMan]

Just to clarify ...

 

I am suggesting a campaign to log *here* on geocaching.com one 'benchmark' in each county.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

OK, I'll start.

Independent City of Falls Church, Virginia

AA 2664

FC GPS 01

[+emike]

I've noticed that in many counties the courthouses are often benchmarks. So are church spires and Capulas of tall historic building as often found on college campuses. So are radio towers. Any way to parce out the type of benchmark from the database?

 

EMike

[+rogbarn]

quote:

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Originally posted by EMIKE:

I've noticed that in many counties the courthouses are often benchmarks. So are church spires and Capulas of tall historic building as often found on college campuses. So are radio towers. Any way to parce out the type of benchmark from the database?EMike

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The marker type is on the geocaching benchmark page just below the altitude line. It is extracted from the datasheet line that contains "MARKER:" which is at or near the top of a group of similar lines just before the history section of the datasheet.

 

In general, the codes that start with "D" are some type of disk, for example:

JC0220_MARKER: DB = BENCH MARK DISK

 

The two digit codes are intersection points (i.e. buildings, towers, etc), example:

JC1585_MARKER: 55 = TOWER

 

Single letter codes are other types of markers, examples:

JC0088_MARKER: R = RIVET

JC1137_MARKER: I = METAL ROD

 

The line is not present on all benchmarks, when doing a search on geocaching, these show up as "not listed", but on the individual benchmark page, geocaching leaves the Marker Type line blank.

 

A search of the benchmarks that I have show 83 different marker types. I think I once found a page on the NGS site that listed the types but I can't find it right now.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Here is the Hippopotamus file that has the datasheet codes. The code in particular is the Monumentation Code, and they are listed in Appendix A.12 (about 60% down in the file).

[+Black Dog Trackers]

How to accomplish one-benchmark-in-every-county?

 

We need a tracking - where are we now, and now, and now?

 

What we would need:

 

1) Jeremy et al. (I don't think any of us could do it) to mine through the 'found it's, listing only the State/County on a regular basis (monthly, seasonally yearly, or something).

 

2) The results of a similar (one-time) mining of all 736,000 marks in the geocaching database. I think this would have to be used because of a likely insurmountable problem of spelling differences between the census list and the NGS list of counties.

 

(Both #1 and #2 would require a sort and uniq function to be done on them.)

 

3) Each time #1 is done, do a join function on #1 and #2 to count matches and non-matches, and list the non-matches. The sort, uniq, and join functions could be done by either Jeremy or one of us.

[+catcher24]

BDT - Thanks for the link to the Hippo file. I printed out the list and can keep it for reference with my other BM info. I couldn't believe there were that many types of markers requiring all those codes!

 

Catcher24

"You see, you spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." Jim Bouton