Mike,

I'm basing my statement on the lack of a monument at the quadripoint in question on: (1) no monument indicated on USGS topo; and (2) the 1991 aerial photo that shows it located in a partially harvested field of what looks like it might be wheat. If the tractors, combines, or whatever were purposely avoiding a "dire penalty" sign, I think that we could see some irregularity in the field.

I see no reason why there might be any federal marker at the site. It's not a USC&GS vertical control benchmark. This is Texas that we're talking about, so the land was never part of the federal public domain nor of the federal public land survey. Original patenting of land titles to private owners, as well as the county boundary surveys, was under the purview of the General Land Office of Texas, and I have pointed you to their files.

Unfortunately, I am unable to assist with the actual content of the county boundary files due to my extremely slow dial-up connection. (I'm far into the country, and my phone line is relayed, modulated, multiplexed, or whatever to such an extent that my top speed is about 26 K.) Downloading such large files would be virtually impossible. Getting topos is hard enough. (I do plan to get satellite broadband as soon as the new WildBlue service rolls out, now expected in second quarter, 2005.)

I can give you an example of the contents of the Texas GLO files found in the indexing. The 1908 plat of the Borden-Howard boundary is at https://scandocs.glo.state.tx.us/arcmaps/pdfs/1694.pdf . The scanned original is on a rolled piece of tracing cloth, 23.7 by 125.7 inches, at a scale of 500 varas per inch, drawn by the two county surveyors. I estimate that it would take me 7.5 hours to download it! Most public libraries have the broadest of broadband, so you might be able to get it.

The area in question is an odd region of Texas in which the state GLO's land survey is a rectangular grid rotated about 15 degrees counterclockwise from the cardinal points. The road grid follows the survey grid. The county boundaries, on the other hand, were specified by the legislature as north-south and east-west lines. Nothing matches! Certainly the county boundaries were marked somehow by their surveyors (perhaps on cadastral boundaries), else the surveys would have had no practical purpose. Everybody already knew that the counties were neat 30-mile rectangles.

Remember that you scoured northern Virginia in vain for a marked tertiary tripoint. That, too, is an area where county and cadastral boundaries don't typically coincide.

You might look for other Texas tertiary quadripoints that are shown as monumented on USGS topos. I will try to assist as well. I would expect that some of them are monumented/marked, especially in the regions where the boundaries do conform to the state's survey grid. I'll keep you informed.

Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA

---- Original Message -----

From: aletheia kallos

To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2004 2:54 PM

Subject: Re: [BoundaryPoint] arrowhead az Re: no mxus for xmus after all but its ajo ho

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

Mike D. wrote: > but does unmonumented necessarily mean unmarked > > & how then do they mark or even know the county lines there anyway > let alone the corners > > & please let me know if you find any better hope for any texas > megapoint visit to be made class a > > that is > one that is definitely marked I was using "unmonumented" to mean "unmarked." It would be difficult for any physical mark to survive in a plowed farm field.

aha then first you precluded but now you merely doubt that such a hypothetical marker could also survive by virue of being protected say by one of those ubiquitous uscgs signposts in its vicinity which warn

do not disturb nearby boundary marker under dire penalty etc etc

&or that such a marker would not also have been designed to withstand such an otherwise obvious demise as you describe

& therefore that it couldnt exist

or do i misread you in this

& being so far unable to follow all your protocols here in surprise tho i will keep trying i cant yet see what you are talking about in regard to plats surveys notes etc

but since you can access them maybe you could describe how these 4 county boundary descriptions describe this megapoint

& maybe you could find some mention in any of the 256 of these county boundary descriptions of any boundary markers &or multipoint markers of any kind

for otherwise you appear to be predicting a complete washout of texas tertiary markers not only for the megapoints but for everything

& moreover you seem to be indicating that these boundaries were surveyed but never durably marked

yikes

but can that be what you mean

or its consequences

for perhaps i am merely racing too far ahead while actually lagging too far behind you

There might be signage on the nearby highway. There seems to be a change of pavement color at about the right place to the north in the aerial photo. The General Land Office of the State of Texas has most of its "County Boundary Files" (usually including original plats and field notes) on-line in PDF format. Go to http://wwwdb.glo.state.tx.us/central/arcmaps/ArcMapsLookup.cfm , select the name of the county in the upper drop-down box, select "County Boundary" in the lower scroll box, ignore all of the parameters in between, then click the "Search" button. You'll get an index to all boundary files for that county. In that index, you can click "More Details..." on each item for dates, surveyor's names, etc. The drawback is that these are huge files suitable for broadband only. Lowell G. McManus Leesville, Louisiana, USA