An interesting case for Sacramento Surveyors...

[Dave Karoly, PLS]

From Perich v. Maurer, 29 Cal. App. 293 (1915):
For the defendants, one J. C. Boyd, a civil engineer and surveyor of long experience, testified: "There were practically two surveys of the entire city as a whole; the first in laying out of the city originally by Sutter; subsequently, in 1878, a resurveying by L. S. Bassett, then city engineer, who attempted to adjust the apparent difference in the property ownership to the line of the streets, for the purpose of street improvement largely, and for the purpose of rectifying errors that were shown to have been made by private surveys of private property, lots, and so forth. It had been the custom theretofore to make surveys from the established monuments, from buildings, taking the nearest building as being a corner, approximately correct, and run out from that"; that the Sutter survey was made in 1848 or 1849 and the Bassett survey in 1878; that these two surveys do not agree, that Bassett attempted to adjust differences through the city, that his policy "was to run a line for several blocks as long as possible, the longer the better, and adjust it with existing conditions"; that there is no way of determining whether this recent survey "conforms to the original survey, the Sutter survey"; that he considered that there was physical evidence that there was a line fence established by agreement between the coterminous owners and "the only monument that we could accept of the old Sutter survey would be the consideration of old buildings"; furthermore, that the Bassett survey "most assuredly is not the accepted survey at this time for the measurement of lots in the city of Sacramento," and "that considered in the light of the original survey, I do not think there is any part of lot 2--as originally surveyed--in this inclosure," declaring this was his professional opinion from a physical examination of the entire block including the said fence and "other collateral evidence."