California Surveyors Forums

By way of introduction, I am licensed in Colorado and my practice mostly involves the retracements of mineral surveys. Over the last several years I have accumulated several sets of special instructions on how to conduct mineral surveys in several of the western states and territories. Prior to 1895 when a Federal manual was finally prepared as instructions for all western states, each state surveyor general was charged with preparing (special) instructions for the deputy mineral surveyors working in their "district".

Not surprisingly, a new set of instructions was often prepared not long after a surveyor general assumed his duties. For example, I have collected a total of 7 sets of special instructions and instructions for deputy mineral surveyors in Colorado between the years 1873 and 1893. During that 20 years, Colorado had a total of 8 surveyors general. The one "lonely" CO surveyor general that appears to not have issued instructions opted instead to issue 8 circulars modifying and expanding on his predecessor's instructions.

Now for the reason for posting this here. I have collected a total of 5 sets of instructions for California and I would like to make the PDF scans of those instructions available to others. I am also interested in knowing about other sets of instructions that this forum's readers may be aware of. The first set of "instructions" was issued on July 15, 1972 that also included the May 10, 1872 mining law and the June 10, 1872 mining regulations. There isn't too much in the instructions, esp. WRT how to conduct a survey. It mostly details the forms that should be used. The first set of special instructions that describes in any detail how mineral surveys were to be conducted was issued by Theo Wagner sometime in 1879. He quickly followed that with another set dated, October 1, 1880. The next set was issued on November 1, 1882 by Theo's replacement, Mr. W. H. Brown. The last set of instructions was issued by CA Surveyor General R. P. Hammond in 1887.

Dave Karoly was kind enough to make Xerox copies of the 1872, 1879, 1880 and 1887 originals that are housed in the California State Library on the "mall" in Sacramento. A private collector allowed me to scan his original of the 1882 special instructions. I am looking for suggestions on what would be the best way to host the PDF files for those interested in downloading them. Unfortunately, the ftp site that my ISP provides has a limit of 10 MB for file storage. The manuals are 21 MB in size with the largest being 8.5 MB.

An aside for those with a copy of Bud Uzes' book, "Chaining the Land", the 1879 special instrutions to U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors is reprinted in Appendix 6 of the 2nd edition. Please reply here or email me if you have ideas on how best to host the files.

Thanks,
Gene Kooper, CO PLS
Lakewood, CO
(303) 989-5424
ekooper@uswest.net

First off, you're a Colorado Surveyor...this is our board...get out of here!!!

Just kidding!

Welcome, Gene! Glad to have you here.

Gene is not "just a mineral surveyor from Colorado". Beside being a great surveyor and friend, Gene is a repository of history and surveying resources. Gene has served both the Colorado organization, Professional Land Surveyors of Colorado, but the Colorado version of BPELS. He is an asset to surveyors in Colorado and will make himself one to those of us in California with the good fortune of getting to know him.

Hopefully, the Administrator will chime in here and ask you to send a disc of the files or arrange to transfer a chunk so that the files can be housed on the site and made accessible.

I'll check with our IT guys to see if I can set up to have you transfer files through our FTP site.

Cheers, Geno! Perhaps you can join US for OUR conference in Vegas next March. Make sure you bring Clara, though!

.

Talk to these guys. I'm setting my company up with their format.

Www.cloudphase.com

CLSA could find value in their format as well.

Cheers.
Clark Stoner, PE, PLS

In the meantime, here are links to the 1872, 1880 and 1882 special instructions for U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors that are located on my ftp site (I hope the HTML links work). Well, I see it doesn't like HTML links, so here's the cut and paste versions.

http://www.users.qwest.net/~ekooper/1872_CA_Manual.pdf

http://www.users.qwest.net/~ekooper/1880_CA_Manual.pdf

http://www.users.qwest.net/~ekooper/1882_CA_Manual.pdf

See August 12th post for active links to all files.

To get to the 1880 mineral survey instructions, please wade past that uninteresting prefatory material addressed to the "agricultural" deputies...er, I mean U.S. Deputy Surveyors (just kidding, but more on those instructions later). I will say one thing about the California deputy mineral surveyors of the 1880s, they were one tough lot of men. Page 16 of 22 of the 1880 PDF file shows a schematic of the standard mineral monument to be installed by mineral surveyors. It is a 4 foot long by 1-foot square stone with the last 1 foot tapered. From the sketch, the weight of the monument is 640 lbs. Given the fact that Mineral Monuments were usually placed on mountain tops, lugging one of those around wasn't for the faint of heart. On page 17 is a photo of the top of Mineral Monument 3 for the Mt. Diablo Meridian that shows the detail of the tablet. Quite the labor of love counter sinking the tablet to the face of the stone.

BTW...for someone in the Sacramento area that is interested in California survey history, I found this intriguing library catalog entry for the California State Library.

California History Room; Stacks; TN223.U55 1873 (local use only).
"United States mining laws, and regulations thereunder, and other reliable information relative to mining claims", 19 pages.
John A. Benson, U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor, Auburn, Placer County, Cala.

Obviously, well before the dark side of the Force ensnared Mr. Benson, he was gainfully employed as a U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor and apparently willing to share his "reliable information" with his peers! Dave Karoly mentioned that this book was very fragile and that the librarian was not willing to subject it to the Xerox machine. I'm not sure whether they would allow photos with a digital camera but the librarian mentioned that making a copy would be much more expensive than the normal Xerox costs.

Cheers,
Gene

Sorry I wasn't able to post this with the other files. It is nearly 9 MB in size. I had to remove the 1880 and 1882 instructions to make room for it, so if you didn't download either of those, please let me know via email. I didn't have room to also include the 1879 instructions, but as I mentioned above, those instructions are in Appendix 6 of the 2nd edition of "Chaining the Land".

http://www.users.qwest.net/~ekooper/1887_CA_Manual.pdf

See August 12th post for active links to all files.

The 1887, "New and Revised Instructions to U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors for the District of California" is the first CA instructions that I have uncovered to include sample field notes and a preliminary plat of the Newbury Gold Quartz claim. Because mineral surveyors were tasked with establishing the locus of a claim by tieing it to a rectangular PLSS corner or mineral monument, the 1887 instructions includes the 1883, "Lost or Obliterated Corners" circular. Also, pasted to page 2 of the PDF file is an 1877 admonition by the Commissioner to all Surveyors General that the 1872 mining law (Section 2324) required the Surveyor General to appoint ONLY COMPETENT deputies!

One item of note is that this is the first set of instructions to mineral surveyors in any western state that required the monumentation of the intersections with senior conflicting lode claims. The procedure in California before 1887 was to only monument the corners of the lode claim along with the ends of the lode and the position(s) of any change in course of the lode. Intersections with senior conflicting claims were usually noted as distances along the exterior boundary of the lode claim being surveyed. If a corner of a senior conflicting claim fell withing the claim being surveyed it was referenced by bearing and distance from the intersection point. Otherwise, the course and distance of the closest corner of the senior claim was referenced.

In order to facilitate more uniformity in the instructions issued by the various state/territory Surveyors General, the GLO Commissioner issued a circular in the late 1880s to use the mineral survey instructions of the established mining districts of California and Colorado as guidance for the other states. Both the Idaho Surveyor General in 1888 and the Montana Surveyor General in 1890 followed California's lead by requiring the intersections to be monumented. A colleague that has retraced many lode claims in Idaho noted that one of his retracements required the setting of monuments at the intersections. He was surprised to find a chiseled stone approx. 1 foot from one of his computed positions. No mention was made in the field notes regarding the stones set at the intersections though.

One other major difference between California and Colorado is that for lode claims in Colorado, the discovery cut, shaft or tunnel was fully described and tied out. The cut, shaft or tunnel had to be a minimum of 10 feet in length for the discovery to be valid! In California, the discovery was often not mentioned in the field notes nor plotted on the plat. Instead a section of the field notes entitled, "Survey of the Lode" was required.

Regards,
Gene Kooper, CO PLS
Lakewood, CO
(303) 989-5424
ekooper@uswest.net

Below are more permanent links to the five sets of instructions for mineral surveys in the district of California. The links in the above two posts are now inactive. If anyone knows of the existance of other instructions, please contact me via email at ekooper@uswest.net

http://www.sdi-baja.com/~kooper/1872_CA_Manual.pdf

http://www.sdi-baja.com/~kooper/1879_CA_Manual.pdf

http://www.sdi-baja.com/~kooper/1880_CA_Manual.pdf

http://www.sdi-baja.com/~kooper/1882_CA_Manual.pdf

http://www.sdi-baja.com/~kooper/1887_CA_Manual.pdf

Included above is the 1879 instructions that I did not have room to post before. As I mentioned, the 1879 instructions are also included along with special instructions to U.S. Deputy Surveyors in Appendix 6 of Bud Uzes' book, "Chaining the Land", 2nd edition.

Sorry for the cut-n-paste links. I haven't figured out how to turn on vB_code yet.

Cheers,
Gene Kooper, CO PLS

If you're still looking for another hosting source, you might want to contact Michael Pallamary, who owns and maintains the Land Surveyors Research and Resource Center site (http://www.tiepoints.com/). He's hosting a bunch of records pertaining to land surveying in California.

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