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Re: RAIN 04/28: X marks the spot



 

Kurilecz, Peter wrote:

All urls are working
The url for this story was changed overnight. It can be accessed from the paper's home page (as noted )by selecting "Archives" for the 27th. Very efficient operation - yesterday's news goes to the archive at 9:00 AM daily.
Nashua Telegraph 4/27/00
X marks the spot, sort of
Obscure markers, even more obscure records call for detective work by surveyors
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com

by Jessie Salisbury
The hidden treasure for surveyor Phil Tuomala of Wilton and his crew was a wooden spade. For Robert Todd of Francestown and his helpers, it was a bone stuck in a stone wall. Both objects were listed on old deeds as marking corners of the property they were trying to survey. Todd didn't find the bone, of course.
 

Having worked in a surveying supply store for 18 years, I can vouch for this one. Every so often the surveyor's trade magazines (Professional Surveyor and P.O.B are the ones I remember) would run stories of the adventures involved in reconstructing old surveys from notes that refer to long-gone - and on rare occasion fictitious - monuments.

On a similar vein, parts of the northern and eastern boundaries of California have been in dispute for decades. I don't rememebr the story behind the variance in locations for the boundary from Lake Tahoe southeast, but the legend is that parts of the boundary with Oregon, especially the western end, were mapped out from the comfort of the surveyor's tent. Don't know if it's true, but given my familiarity with the terrain and the climate (I was born there lo these many years ago) it is certainly plausable.

Best wishes,

Thomas Berry, Archivist
Historical Construction Equipment Association
16623 Liberty Hi Road
Bowling Green, Ohio 43402
419-352-5616
tberry@wcnet.org