Mike D.,

Rather than further clutter the below with insertions, I will reply up here with responses lettered according to your lettered insertions.

A. I'm sorry, but that's what I though you meant. You know, it's sometimes hard to tell. :-) I now fully accept your explanation that you meant it otherwise. I know that you could approximately date monuments by sight, but you didn't state any presumed dates. I see your points though.

B and C. It did not cross my mind from your earlier writings that you thought initially that the "Initial Monument" might have been Atwood's initial point. I though that you understood it to be Thompson's, and that's why neither of us understood the other's point. Such are the difficulties of exploring deeply esoteric issues by e-mail. In person, the failure to communicate would have lasted twenty seconds, not two or three days.

D. Oh, I know that you wouldn't do any such resorting contrary to statute and all known conventions of surveying. I just wanted to clarify that these heavily revised statutes had not revised the old surveys to modern specifications (analogous to what Nebraska's has done to certain county boundaries in the meandering Platte River). So, I concur with your concurrence.

E and F. My statements that Atwood's 1918 survey was done north-to-south are based on deduction from the statutes. The 1983 statutory description of the boundary of La Paz County speaks of the point (singular) where both the 1908 Mojave-Yavapai survey of 113°20' and Atwood's 1918 survey of 113°20' intersect the main channel of the Santa Maria River. If Atwood had begun on MXUS (or anywhere else) to survey the specified parallel, it would have been a miracle for him to have precisely hit the south terminus of the 1908 survey on the Santa Maria River when he was under not statutory compulsion to do so. Thus, it is a reasonable deduction that Atwood accepted the predetermined southern terminus of the 1908 survey as accurate (perhaps even having been a participant himself, but that's pure speculation) and headed south. There was almost certainly no other predetermined point on 113°20' at MXUS or elsewhere until Atwood was contracted to establish some 160 miles of it between the Santa Maria River and MXUS.

Your county formation chronology does indicate that Maricopa and Yavapai were formed in 1871, but the statutory description of their common boundary includes (as a terminus of one of the geodesics that Thompson surveyed in 1924) a point on the Agua Fria River "two miles southerly and below the place where the residence of J. W. Swilling stood on January 31, 1877." From this, we know that some revision of the statutory delimitation was done on or after the 1877 date. It is fairly clear, though, that the undemarcated Maricopa Yavapai boundary was specified at the 34th parallel prior to Atwood's 1918 survey. While it is conceivable that Atwood could have taken a stab at its location as he worked southward on his own line, such point is not likely to have been his actual initial point.

G. Ooops! I had forgotten that you found Monument 2.

H. I agree on both counts.

Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA

----- Original Message -----

From: aletheia kallos

To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 2:01 PM

Subject: Re: [BoundaryPoint] lamaya etc conclusion was Re: fresh algatn report by new players on a 7 point roll

"Lowell G. McManus" <mcmanus71496@...> wrote:

Please see my five numbered insertions below.

done & please see my several lettered ones too

now somewhat less hastily inserted
Lowell G. McManus Leesville, Louisiana, USA ----- Original Message ----- From: "aletheiak" <aletheiak@...> To: <BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 9:49 PM Subject: [BoundaryPoint] lamaya etc conclusion was Re: fresh algatn report by new players on a 7 point roll > > > 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 (1) That's what Supremes often say in their opinions that dissent only in part from a majority opinion. In this case, I concur in your characterizing the Initial Monument as "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," but I dissent in your characterization of the other monuments as "presumably set exactly on the 34th parallel notwithstanding precedence." aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa cmon silly you know i neither said nor meant it the way you are twisting it just for the fun of dissenting with it & just so you could act like a supreme tho you are already divine & you know i saw & read on the fellow maya corner rocks numbered 3 & 2 that they were explicitly presumed & claimed by the surveyor at the time to be on 34d00m00s & you know i could date them to within a few years accuracy just on stylistic & technical grounds & you know i know these topos that show them are already decades old anyway even if i couldnt date them or you didnt know i could & you know i know survey tech has kept improving over the past century & you know or can imagine the rate of speed i have to move at so did you really think i was meaning or even saying that & why couldnt or wouldnt you see i meant that both of the surveyors in succession in those olden days must have presumed they were setting their rocks on the 34th parallel but anyway i am not sure i still believe that hahahahaha now that i see you appear to be indicating below that you have confirmed that the atwood 1918 initial point was not at all a 34th parallel try but was many miles away at the northernmost point of the 113d20m sector he was extending southward thru lat34 to mexico & if this is indeed the case historically & not just part of your suspicion or presumption then i will join in your opinion or conjecture in number 2 below > > 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. bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb yes that is a part of your opinion that is totally gratuitous superfluous & inconceivable to me > 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 (2) I do mean that Corner Number 1 is a revision of the Initial monument, but not an exact modern revision. cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc of course i understood it couldnt be modern or even recent I conjecture that Thompson probably established both--the former as a working station, and the latter as the official tripoint. What I mean is that Thompson could have surveyed along Atwood's line to the approximately correct distance from some other known point and set his initial point there. He could have then started his astronomical work at measured distances north and south of that point in order to close in on whatever he determined to be the 34th parallel specified in the then-current statutes. Keep in mind that the now-current statutes are revised. Even the boundary statutes for Maricopa and Yavapai mention La Paz, which did not exist until 1983, but they still specify the Atwood and Thompson lines of 1918 and 1924 respectively. If they intended to resort to the exact 34th parallel as measured by some modern or future survey, they would say so. ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd but of course such resort goes against everything we know about boundary conservationism & we have already seen several examples of such ignorant opinion laughed away so i couldnt very well have meant it in the sense you are dissenting from & i do concur with your following dissent from that sense No, they intend that Atwood's and Thompson's lines be recovered by future surveyors to the maximum extent possible. > note too that they are not even in perfect meridional alignment on > the topo (3) I had not noticed this. Upon close examination of a zoomed-in map, I can see what you mean, but I think this is an artifact of a slight mismatch of the two sheets. (Remember that the cut line runs between the two triangle symbols.) You can see the mismatch very clearly in the red section line just east of the county line. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee it is fortunate that both rocks are probably lost enough & the question unanswerable enough that we dont really have to squint over this a moment longer & since i could accept that this initial monument here was 1924 rather than 1918 if the 1918 initial monument is known to be elsewhere &or if this 34th parallel sector of maya is known not to have been on the books yet in 1918 i will just blink on this > 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 (4) What we do have is a chronology of surveys. The Mohave-Yavapai boundary (farther north) was surveyed as 113°20' in 1908 (during territorial times) by a surveyor unnamed in the revised statutes. It terminates on the Santa María River at the southeast corner of Mojave. Atwood began at that point in 1918 and carried the same meridian southward all the way to MXUS. ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff is there some historical info that leads you to believe he did actually begin there & did run only north to south no initial monument indicated here http://topozone.com/map.asp?z=12&n=3800092&e=284864&datum=nad83 tho i realize thats neither here nor there & this county formation chronology suggests the maya boundary dates from 1871 tho it doesnt mention the 34th parallel http://www.azleg.state.az.us/issues/senate/arizona%20county%20formation.htm so pending the historical info you may have to the contrary it is still not inconceivable to me that the 1918 initial point could for some reason have been a try for 113d20 x 34 albeit completely out of order starting at an odd place is known to happen on occasion In 1924, Thompson surveyed four line segments (two parallels and two geodesics) of the Maricopa-Yavapai boundary. All of the now-current revised statutes specify these lines as surveyed back then in 1908, 1918, and 1924. > > 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 (5) If all markers are indeed lost except for Monument Number 3, gggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg well i did recover corner number 2 also tho it isnt on the topo & my guess is that only corner number 1 is lost & that all or most of the others could be found but yes i agree with the following then future surveyors would have to replicate this particular one of Thompson's segments by surveying east and west from it, modern exactitude as to the 34th parallel notwithstanding. > > > > > Lowell G. McManus > > Leesville, Louisiana, USA hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh all of this is not about much come to think of it tho it is so interesting because so much of the puzzle is missing to me it is more like doing a diagramless crossword or playing blindfold chess than arguing a legal case

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