California Surveyors Forums

I'm working in the vicinity of the HWY 24 / Interstate 680 Interchange in the SF East Bay Area. I have obtained ROW and monument maps from Caltrans for this area. Can somebody point me in the right direction of what department/person I should talk to about how Caltrans determined the location of underlying roads that were vacated/destroyed as part of the freeway construction? In other areas I've worked in the Caltrans maps usually show lots of found monuments that they reference on their map that shows how they did the underlying boundary determinations prior to taking the land for the freeway. On the maps in this area they show nothing found, only what they set for the freeway alignment. Any ideas?

Usually the maps will have a reference to the R/W Hardcopy. The HC should have all of the monuments and some occupation on it. Back in those days when that was created, I think they had an unlicensed R/W Engineer doing the analysis. He was one of the last to hold the position without a license.

Typically the HC will have two columns of coordinates. Field and office. The field is where the survey crew found the position and the office value is a calculated position and the opinion of the R/W engineer where he thinks the corner is.

Typically the R/W engineers up in District 4 gave more credence to the bearings and distances of record vs. the original monuments. Make your own analysis.

They may also have the field notes available from the retracement survey. Hope you have large budget, it can get somewhat complex.

Check with Right of Way Engineering or Surveys. Not sure who controls what today.

Good luck,

Try Tom Taylor in District 4. At one time he was heading up right of way there.

The number I have for the District 4 Records Section is Chris Urkofsky at 510-286-4508

Maybe you want the Caltrans Coordinate Control Maps for the area.

Caltrans used to compute their Land Net and show the information and coordinates on their Coordinate Control Maps.

It may be that some Districts have different names for the same thing.

Thanks all for your help. As Larry suggested I will try and locate the hard copy map that the actual calcs were performed with, possibly it may show the location of found monumentation used in the highway takings.

Excellent. Thanks for posting that list.