[or-roots] Water Related Story

[Leslie Chapman]

Nancy;

Since you talk about 80 acres, I believe you are talking about aliquot
parts, that is your property is described as NE, NW, SE or SW 1/4 of some
1/4 of a section and the adjacent 1/4 whatever that might be, or else it is
described as some 1/2 of a 1/4 of a section. This means that if some
surveyor decides that some 1/4 corner or 1/16th corner is incorrect, or they
can't find it, they have to re-establish it according to the rules of the
game for subdividing a section. That is one possible source of error, for
example if your neighbor (thier client) owned the E 1/2 and you owned the W
1/2 of the NE 1/4 of a section and the section happened to be twenty feet
short west to east, to follow the rules of the game your neighbor should
have originally had 20 feet less land in  his "1/2" than you had  in your
"1/2." I know that sounds odd, but the principle was to try and create the
maximum number of "true forties" ie aliquot parfts that were close to 40
acres in a 1/16th of a section and throw all the Ooops in the norht and east
portion of the section. Now if the surveyor came in recently and split the
section truly in half ie 1310 feet for you and 1310 feet for your neighbor,
he is in error unless he can show that the original survey was in error in
the same way. Here is the rub, if in fact the original survey was done to
the result that they determined you 80 would be 1320 feet wide and the one
belonging to your neighbor would be 1300 feet wide for a total of 2620 feet;
when in fact there was only 2600 feet, the recent surveyor would have a
quandry. He can't really change the proportions of the land allocation and
what he would have to do is divide the half mile by taking 1320/2620 times
2600 and giving that to you and the rest to your neighbor. Or at least that
is the way I understand the rules. Now if he were working on a Cadastral
Survey contract that required him to renew the "origninal" government
corners, I think it would be different, you would still have 1320 and your
neighbor would have 1280.

So these may be the issues that altered the location of your line, but like
I say from what you are saying I believe your blazed line was an original
government line and should have been held fi at all possible. You say the
area burned; did it completely burn up the trees, or just damage them and
then they were salvged? I don't think a forest fire in ordinary
circumstances would destroy the trees enough burning through a stand with
original  entry survey blazes to completely obliterate them unless it was
incredibly intense.

 It is also possible that some non surveyor ran a blaze line where they
"thought" the original line was, but you don't see too many of those.

Les C
-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy Lee Adams
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 10:52 PM
To: or-roots mail list
Subject: Re: [or-roots] Water Related Story


About thirty yrs ago I was showed the blazed trees & told that's how they
marked the boundary line for our 80 acres by blazing the inside of the tree
the land is on. It might have been the ggGrandfather who did this, not sure.
I don't know much on how to really describe it. The 80 acres directly next
to our 80 acres that line it took the surveyors extra 3 days to figure out
the correct line. That is the one we do not agree with. These surveyors were
hired by the neighbor..

Nancy