Survey marks found on trees. Info requested.

[JasperFrank]

I'm attempting to relocate a ground pipe bounty marker for the south western part of my property. I knew sort of where it was and had it clearly marked till we had some rather nasty ice storms that down trees all over that area. I can't find any evidence of the location of the pipe any more. It is possibly under a fallen tree or a large pile of fallen branches.
The entire southern bounty is a straight line, running due east and due west. So If I can find this marker, it would be easy to establish the exact bountry line West to East to a major USGS brass marker.
My question is that, I have found surveyor marks on some of the bigger trees that are "Roughly" in a line of what I know to be close to the actual division line, which was a set of temporary posts that had a nail on top of them perfectly inline. Those exact posts are now long gone. And I admit I was an idiot for not putting down more durable stakes back when the line was clearly established 30 years ago. The property is rather hilly and in some places very steep.
The Sun was just right today to find the barely visible markings made on the trees 30 years ago. They are a faint red circle with a short red line extending straight up from the top of the circle. All of the markings are only on the due West side of the trees, and all of the short red lines off these circles are straight up. I do remember that the tree markings where on my property, and the "True Line" set by the poles with the target nails where slightly south, by a few feet, of these tree markings. Today I found one Eastern tree mark that has to be within 50 feet of where the Pipe has to be. The issue is that the next mark to the East, is a set of marks on two close together trees that are 90 degrees to the line. And I can't see the third Eastern tree mark, which is rather far away, over a hill, to get a straight line towards the final Pipe boundary marker. If I line up one of those trees, to the last other marked Western tree it points one way, and if I site off the other tree it goes in another direction. This presents a rather large area to try and use a metal detector to relocate the Boundary Pipe on a hill that is barely walk-able. Do surveyors "split" the difference if they marked two trees 90 degrees to the boundary line?

 

[Rockbadchild]

No there is no splitting difference if it was a professional survey .. i am somewhat confuse as to why some random mark would be at 90 degree from the est west line other then if it was used as temporary turning angle unless is your north south property line but it dosent sound like it …. if you have two points along your line just get the degree off your compass and keep laying yourself front sites to keep your bearings to find your pin … because this pin in question is on the corner of the property right ? I my missing something ?

 

[jaxs]

Surveys have compass headings that can be used to find latitude and longitude of any known corner or change in direction which can be used via gps satellite to find any other piticular spot along boundaries.

 

[airbiscuit]

Often, there is a metal pipe below the surface. Metal detector?

 

[Rockbadchild]

Surveys have compass headings that can be used to find latitude and longitude of any known corner or change in direction which can be used via gps satellite to find any other piticular spot along boundaries.

right … which requires professional help OP already probably payed good money to get his property Survey 30 years ago the survey was done, pins installed, I don’t think he want to pay again to simply refreshing it up.

 

[Rockbadchild]

did they give you maps with the survey? … i think with some map, compass, chainsaw, metal detector and a little bit of sweats and determination you should be able to pull it off … there is also the Polaris app it could help you can track your course it is ver clear and there is a new feature to track property line but i haven’t played with it yet.

 

[jaxs]

right … which requires professional help OP already probably payed good money to get his property Survey 30 years ago the survey was done, pins installed, I don’t think he want to pay again to simply refreshing it up.

Or a copy of previous survey and 13 year old kid with an app on his phone. That is if as you imply,op isn't capiable of doing it himself.

 

[Rockbadchild]

Or a copy of previous survey and 13 year old kid with an app on his phone. That is if as you imply,op isn't capiable of doing it himself.

ho I see, I miss understood your post. When you mentionne GPS I took it as road/ land survey GPS system with base station and rover which are worth 500k and not as a handheld Garmin type gps that’s why I said required professional help. Handheld GPS have a accuracy of plus minus 3m so it still would need to be used in conjunction with compass. But my bad to assume what you were suggesting.

 

[oosik]

My current property( 80 acres ) was part of an initial government homestead survey in 1892. The original survey is a page long verbal description. Specific markings ( razor-like cuts in the under-bark of close trees ) were made and recorded. Distances from these trees, with the markings, to the actual property corner, were also recorded. Subsequent sales, of adjoining lands, have resulted in actual steel pipe markers placed in the ground for three of my four corners. One has a USGS brass hub.

When I moved here - I knew I would have to fence the entire property - barbed wire fencing. With a metal detector I found the survey markers and later - the described marks on the trees.

The scribed marks on these trees meant nothing to me. A local surveyor could read them with great ease. They were so uncommon to find - he took pictures - and now they are recorded in a local geographical survey text.

I had little problem finding the three steel stakes - once I got away from the homestead buildings and out buildings. Around these old building sites - all you find - - nails, spikes, metal cans, pieces of broken machinery, dry cell batteries, etc, etc.

 

[oosik]

JasperFrank - if you just need a "approximation" of where the property line is - then splitting the difference might be OK.

However - if your plan is to install something of permanence - fence, building, plantings, cultivated fields, etc. Then I would recommend a official survey or have a surveyor refresh the survey points.

It depends upon how much time you want to spend finding these original survey markers.

 

[newbury]

And surveyors make mistakes.
I had my property in Mississippi surveyed by a local, well respected, surveyor back in 2011 when we bought it.
When he emailed me the recorded survey I immediately tried to put it into digital format.
And found he had some numbers wrong and the plat was 90° off. He blamed it on new equipment and got it rectified.

 

[dodge man]

I am a mostly retired land surveyor and these threads always scare me. Some of the advice is good, most of it bad.

First off, what state are you located in? That old of a survey was not done with gps so homeowner gps is probably not a lot of help.

The rest of what I say is a guess and is possibly local custom. In some areas it was common to blaze trees. They would be marked a certain way if the tree was on line, marked another way if they were near the line. These blazes were normally done with a axe. My guess is instead of damaging trees they started using paint. I say “mark in a certain way” which means I don’t know what local custom is.

You can see if you are trying to use trees to extend a line, any two trees is going to give you a different location depending if they are on the line or how close they are to the line. I’ve spent a lot of time with a metal detector looking for corners over the years, it takes patience. We also use metal detectors specialized for finding iron markers. They don’t find junk like jewelry but will find a lot of other random metal.

Good luck.

 

[JethroB]

Sort of on topic, what I like to use once a corner is found is a stout steel T-post driven in and then drop a length of white PVC pipe down over the post. Makes it easier to find later on.

 

[JasperFrank]

Yes, I am attempting to use the "Blazed" trees to follow a line. The marks are all and only on the due west side of the trees. They seem to be all the same mark, which was a scar made with a hatchet in the form of a circle with a deep cut line going up from the top of the circle. These were painted red, which has become infused with the new bark. It is amazing to me that i had never noticed most of these blaze marks till now, and with my eye now trained to see them, I am seeing lots of them. This will make the job much, much easier.

I'm in Central Western Oregon about 16 miles South-East of Eugene. I have no urgent reason for finding this marker. But 10 years down the line, I will probably need to re-survey and this time lay down some permanent stakes. Which if I have anything to offer to the readers of TBN, is to set those when it is clear where your legal line is just after a survey. I am attempting to freshen up the line as i found an abandoned bow hunting deer stand, that appears to be on my property, but might not be. The terrain is very confusing and every time I try to visualize this property line it doesn't make sense when I'm following it. Its like one of those fun houses built on a 30 degree angle.

I have a handle on what my questions really are now.

1. Is there a standard to blazing marks on trees? Do these marks, if different from each other, have any extra meaning. For instance, this morning I found a mark that was more of a diamond shape, and not the circle with the line out of the top. It is the Western most tree, and only this morning did I notice it. I'm guessing that this is ether the Start of the Blaze, or that this tree is ON the boundary line.

2. Is there a rule of thumb as to how far a blazed tree can be to the actual boundary line. There are no trees in the verbal description of the property, only set pipes, a USGS Monument, distances and degrees. I'm assuming that the Blaze marks are just rough guides and have no legal weight. They are there just as a guide line for timber sales or other activities that don't have to be right on the legal line.

3. Not a question, but thank all you guys for replying, as it helped me focus on a method to relocate this pipe. GPS will not help to locate, but once I have found it I'm going to have it registered some how. Metal Detector is turning out to be useless, as this marker is with in throwing distance from a 90 year old road. So far, I have found more beer cans than I care to enumerate.

 

[dodge man]

Is the corner you are trying to find a section corner or quarter section corner? If so those corners usually have what is called a monument record. If it is you can get a copy at the courthouse. It will have a way to cross tie the missing section corner in, usually from something within a 100 feet.

Is the survey company still in business? Call them and ask them about the blazes. In Illinois surveyors just don’t use blazes so I’m no help. I suspect in your area most surveyors probably know what the blazes mean.

If you can narrow down the area to a 100 foot circle, you can find the corner with a metal detector. It might not be easy though.

 

[dodge man]

Google “surveyors blaze marks in trees” might help.

 

[JasperFrank]

"Google “surveyors blaze marks in trees” might help." Thank you for the suggestion but no help there, as there isn't a standardization of marks. Most every entry from Google is from Maine where they use their own regional markings. And even in Google Earth Pro, the GPS is of no help as they don't give resolution close enough.

 

[JasperFrank]

"It might not be easy though." As I'm finding out. I'm not a young man any more, and falling down on rocks yesterday was a bit of a toll as were the black berries that cut me up pretty bad. I have a renewed respect for surveyors. That is a difficult job especially in the summer with the ground wasps. And being the first to tell people what they don't own.

And to answer a question, I am trying to go from my, what I think to be the Reference South Pipe, yet to be found, to a Monument USGA, big brass thingy, a 1/2 mile away, which I have been to, walking the property line when I first bought it, that determines the line. I was young then and walked the whole thing. There was a target on the Eastern side that I should have made a more permanent marker, across a very difficult terrain.

 

[ponytug]

@JasperFrank you might try getting a foot long piece of pipe, and figure out what its signal is like on you metal detector, and then turn down the sensitivity to see if you can find pipe and not beer cans.

Do you know for the prior survey that the marker is X number of feet from the center of the road? While I would rely on it, it might help limit your beginning search area.

All the best,

Peter

 

[dodge man]

What I got from Google was there would be a blaze on two sides of the tree if it’s on line, one where the line enters and one where it exits. If there is just one mark, that mark is facing the line but not on it. I saw a reference to blazing trees that are within 50 links (33 feet) of the line but I don’t know if that’s followed.

I picture the corner you are looking for on a hillside that is wooded, probably covered with leaves and maybe slick. You take two steps forward and slide back one. I’ve been there and done that. If I thought a corner was there I was extremely persistent when it came for finding it to the point of stubbornness.

A picture of the largest monument I ever found. This is my helper standing on it. It wasn’t set by a surveyor but just happened to be on the corner Does this look like your terrain?