comments hastily inserted as the library is closing

--- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Lowell G. McManus"
<mcmanus71496@m...> wrote:

> Mike D. wrote:
>
> > there still remained the mystery of what the initial monument may

have initialized

>
> > perhaps it was just a preliminary mayayu
> > or in other words a proto paleo lamaya
> > & thus initial only in the chronological sense & no longer in the

border marking sense

> > having subsequently been revised & trumped by the corner number 1

marker

> > which along with corners 2 & 3 & perhaps others was presumably

set exactly on the 34th parallel

> > notwithstanding precedence
>
> I concur in part and dissent in part. (I've always wanted to say

that!)

bravo
but what does it mean

> Arizona Revised Statutes specify the boundary between La Paz County

and its eastern neighbors Yavapai and Maricopa as "the meridian line
one hundred thirteen degrees twenty minutes west longitude, as
defined by the Atwood survey of 1918." The Maricopa-Yavapai boundary
is "the thirty-fourth parallel north latitude, as defined by the
Thompson survey of 1924."

>
> Thus, the north-south line was in place before the east-west line.

I suspect that the Initial Monument was the preliminary point on
Atwood's meridian that Thompson chose from which to begin his
measurements. His final answer would have been marked by Corner
Number 1. However, the latter point is not a modern exactitude
notwithstanding precedence.

good good good & yes yes yes
so far as i understand you
but do you really think it was just chance that these 2 initial
monuments were 50 yards apart in such a vast desert
yikes
& that the later one was not a revision of the earlier one

note too that they are not even in perfect meridional alignment on
the topo
so the revision may actually have been of both latitude & longitude
tho that will be of no consequence if both markers are as lost as i
believe they are

indeed the atwood survey may live on now only in the arizona revised
statutes
ironically enough
since i cant find any other evidence of it on the topos
nor anywhere else

myself i still completely concur with myself in the above conjecture
pending any more on atwood anyway

but perhaps a county formation chronology will help settle this too

> I note, interestingly, that Monument Number 3, which you found, is

shown as a rectangle; whereas the trio of missing marks at and near
the county tripoint are shown as triangles. I don't have a key to
the USGS's map symbols (and neither TopoZone nor TerraServer seem to
provide us one), but this might mean something. Can anyone elucidate
us as to the difference?

squares on borders generally mean border monuments

triangles mean a variety of other reference points
sometimes marked by disks pipestems pins cairns etc
but i have often found them unmarked by anything so obvious

with the benefit of hindsight
triangles on a border should have alerted me to the possibility that
the named markers were lost

> Lowell G. McManus
> Leesville, Louisiana, USA