Need Help Finding

[+CosmicMiami]

Found this BM close to this cache. In the gallery is a photo of the mark. When I click on the "nearby benchmarks" link, it doesn't appear to be listed. Any help? Thanks.

[+BasicPoke]

That marker was placed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, so it will not appear in the database on geocaching.com, and is not loggable there. The database of benchmarks at geocaching.com contains markers placed by National Geodetic Survey and its predecessor organizations. Many of them are marked "U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey" for example.

 

You can create a waymark for that marker at www.Waymarking.com, in the category "U.S. Benchmarks". Then others can find it and log it.

BasicPoke

[+LSUFan]

That marker was placed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, so it will not appear in the database on geocaching.com, and is not loggable there. The database of benchmarks at geocaching.com contains markers placed by National Geodetic Survey and its predecessor organizations. Many of them are marked "U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey" for example.

 

You can create a waymark for that marker at www.Waymarking.com, in the category "U.S. Benchmarks". Then others can find it and log it.

BasicPoke

 

In simple terms, the NGS database will (and does) have many markers from different agencies (including the Corp of Engineers, differing state Dept of Transportations, USGS, and many others) that are part of the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS).

 

Other federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as some private entities maintain thousands of geodetic reference stations that are also part of the NSRS. The National Geodetic Survey maintains the survey data for all these stations, as well as the data for its own stations, in a central database and makes it available for public access. It's this database that you see on gc.com ( and the info provided on gc.com hasn't been updated since around the year 2000 which is when they placed it there).

 

The NGS has certain requirements that must be met for the markers to be included in the NSRS, which is referred to as "bluebooking". There are a lot of markers set out by different agencies that haven't been "bluebooked" and therefore will not be listed in the NGS database.

 

When you find one of these non-bluebooked kind of markers, then you can log it on Waymarking as BasicPoke stated.

 

Hope this helps kinda clear up any confusion. If anyone has the time or interest, there is a ton of great information about the history of the NSRS here:

 

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/news/features/nov09/directions.html

 

http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/transformations/spatial/welcome.html

Edited February 21, 2011 by LSUFan

[+Da Krewe]

Thanks for the info guys. I'm not the person who started the thread, but Saturday I found what I thought was a benchmark.

 

I was excited until I found it wasn't listed. Still, I will log it in Waymarking and keep looking.

[+BasicPoke]

That makes a lot of sense LSUFan, thanks. I never thought about it this way. Around here we don't tend to have markers in the database that were placed by other agencies, but no doubt you are correct.

BasicPoke

[+Klemmer]

Da Krewe:

 

Well, I believe it IS a benchmark. It's just not one listed by the NGS at present.

 

You might check the Jefferson County website for a database of their benchmarks. Some counties make them available on-line.

 

Klemmer