Land Boundary Monuments, Past and Present (6 of 6)

Before the advent of aluminum caps for iron bars the Bathey company produced a steel T-bar which would accommodate a 1 inch diameter nickel plated brass cap, which was affixed to the top of the T-bar with a steel drive screw. The cap was identified as a "survey point," and the surveyor's registration number was stamped on the cap by the Bathey company. These were widely advertised in surveying periodicals. I used them before I obtained the aluminum caps, and found them to be very satisfactory in appearance and durability. The single drawback was the lack of particular location identification, such as could be stamped on the brass or aluminum cap.

A common cap in use today is the plastic cap. Previously available only in yellow, I find from a recent brochure that they are now available in many colors. These are stamped by the company with the name or number of the surveyor -- if you hurry, you will be able to read the surveyor's number before it weathers away. I have never seen one that identified the corner that the cap purported to mark.

Although the general public is usually acquainted with only the monument marking the actual corner, occasionally it is necessary or helpful to set a witness corner, which is on line but a short distance away, or one or more reference monuments, which are not on line, but are tied by bearing and distance to the corner. Unfortunately, if a property owner finds anything resembling a survey marker anywhere near where he thinks the corner to be, he is likely to use it to locate his fence line, and the surveyor will be lucky if he does not take out the monument and put a corner post in its place. This applies to all types of monuments -- even witness corners and reference monuments. A careful explanation may help with the original owner, but it will not ensure perpetual security. If fencing appears to be eminent, a good solution is the installation of a well flagged large spike or iron bar at the corner, with a substantial metal capped iron witness corner set two feet from the corner on line, and slightly below ground surface. If this is shown on the plat and noted in the field notes, the witness corner can be recovered by future surveyors, and yet remain safe from the depredations of the fencing crew.

Currently only round metal caps for survey markers are available. It seems to me that over a period of time a convention might be adopted whereby only round (or octagonal) caps would be used for actual corner markers, with a triangular cap used for witness corners, and a square cap used for reference monuments. If there is a call for monuments of this type, the manufacturers will be happy to oblige, as I found during a recent conversation with one of them.

A Few Words on Fence Corners
Fence corners often remain as the best evidence of land boundaries, either as the best location for section and quarter corners or of deeded tracts without permanent monumentation. It is not unusual to find a pipe or steel bar driven adjacent to an ancient cedar corner post. This iron monument is often accepted by survey parties as THE CORNER! In cases where the corner post obviously predates the iron monument, I believe the post should be taken as the corner and the iron monument then cited in the field notes and plat as a reference monument. In central Texas the chain link fence is a popular fence on rear and side property lines. The pipe corner posts are set in concrete, and in many instances a one-half inch iron bar will be found in the concrete two or three inches away from the post. Either (a) the bar was removed and the fencing crew set the post more or less in the supposed original position of the bar, or (b) the post was set in the hole at one side of the original location of the bar, and an attempt was made to place the bar back at its original position in the concrete. In either case the dragon wins.

A Closing Note on Rights of Way
Here is a situation that I encountered about two years ago, which I would not cite except that I find that this is not an isolated instance of attempted revision of highway boundaries. I was asked by a landowner to check the location of a strip to be subject to an easement as it had been staked by an engineering firm employed by a large public utility. This strip was adjacent to the major highway between Austin and Dripping Springs, in Texas, and a few miles east of Dripping Springs. The letter sized map prepared by the engineering firm identified a "corrected" location for the state highway concrete right of way monument, which was intact and about three feet away. This point had been marked by the engineering firm with a yellow plastic cap. The original Texas Highway Department concrete right of way markers existed along this north line, and there were no missing monuments along this section. Upon inquiry I found that the engineering firm had run several miles along the proposed water line location in the right of way with GPS, and had arrived at "adjusted" positions for the right of way PC's and PT's, without considering that the monuments had been in place and accepted for a half century by the state and the adjacent land owners. Let us hope that the monuments that surveyors find will continue to control property boundaries, and not be displaced by a point determined by a GPS operator using "adjusted" values.

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©2004 Charles R. Swart