California Surveyors Forums

On a Record of Survey the surveyor is using ties from the County Surveyor's office to locate the 1/4th Corner. I believe he should dig for the physical monument, and if not found, then use ties. He maintains that conditions make it difficult to dig for the monument. I see nothing in the law that addresses this issue. Any comments?

Detailed aspects of the practice of land surveying are unlikely to be controlled by statute. General provisions, such as reasonable and prudent, due diligence, professional judgment are the guidelines found in the regulatory legislation.
As a practical matter, using the position derived from the ties should be confirmed by comparison with dimensions to other controlling corners shown on earlier maps which had measured to the buried monument.
An analogy can be made to an obliterated government monument, restored from ties to witness trees. If record and measured angles and distances don't match then, by all means, dig to confirm the corner location.
I understand the surveyor ' s reluctance to begin with digging if it is unsafe, provided that the preponderance of the remaining evidence is collaborative.

The decision to not dig for a monument involves several factors. Is this a monument that has access difficulties and the reason for the ties are to preclude the need to keep digging it up? Are the ties nearby and reliable? Is there a discrepancy surrounding the description of the monument that requires closely analyzing and verifying its character?

Some monuments have plenty of history, are not in dispute, have been tied multiple times and shown of record, and have sufficient nearby, verifiable accessories. Their accessories are in fact part of the "corner" and may be entirely sufficient for the purpose at hand.

It's the surveyor's call who is using the monument whether it needs to be physically recovered or not.

Dave Ryan,
Humboldt County

If he states on the map he is using ties instead of the actual monument and everything fits I don't see a issue. We have streets here where the CL mon is in the #1 lane of 40mph heavy traffic. Your choice but I would accept the ties.
Another issue here is double left turn lanes, the CL mon has cars on each side of it turning left - not good for us soft bodies.

Just to add another penny and a half.
As above, if the measurements substantially fit record information then no need to blast another hole in the pavement, which brings me to another point. Sometimes blasting out a hole, will create potholes despite efforts to patch. Unless you're under a rock, you will have noticed the macro amount of "letters to the editor" complaining about road conditions in California communities.
Make no "misteak" I personally love to dig up history and look upon the actual monument, however, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

Be safe my friends

Not quite the same, but several years ago, a survey crew at the company I worked for had located a section corner monument that fell in the courtyard of a high-end professional complex. It was not an original monument, but there was a pretty good history on it to be reasonably certain that it was either a replacement of the original (or a replacement of a replacement), or decent perpetuation of the original position. It fit well with the 1/4s to the W & S, and we had 1 suspected bearing tree left at the right approx direction & distance (how they saved an original tree while building the complex around it, I don't quite know - they must have made an extra effort becaus it was a large well formed oak). There was a record several decades back of a surveyor having found the oak bt with still partially visible scribing, and he drove a RR spike into the wood within the blaze. The tree our crew found had a closed up blaze and had checked it with the Schonstedt - it screamed out loud.

That wasn't good enough for the LS assigned to the project. He wanted to take a chainsaw and open up the tree to verify both spike and scribing. We argued, he insisted, I reassigned the project to someone else.

That was the same guy who had worked for a nearby city a few short years before and got fired for appropriating a road maintenance crew without prior approval to "assist" him to dig an 8' deep hole, complete with safety shoring, and full lane closures on a primary thoroughfare to find an original monument for which there were record ties readily available. He was being a diligent technician but a foolish professional.

Although it's almost always best, if not required to lay eyes on and verify the original monument, there are times when record perpetuations, or even ties will do.

It's always important to be safe. And like what land butcher said, if flow of traffic is high, I'm going to play safe and stick with the ties and of course check distances/angles with other monuments to see how well the calculated position from the ties fit.