For all the technological marvels we have now, what was accomplished centuries ago strikes me as FAR more remarkable. The fact that folks understood that atmospheric pressure decreased with altitude before modern meteorology and climate science is kind of mind-blowing. They didn't rely on GPS, and such. They were doing the groundwork on which modern day knowledge is founded.
I owned a house in San Jose, CA. I had a property line dispute with a neighbor. We hired a surveyor who moved the corner of the property a foot on my side. This put the edge of the property a foot inside my 90 year old garage. I had the surveyor re-find the from the next street over. and the corner of the property was now a foot on the neighbor's property. Back in the late 1800's the surveyor botched what is called "turning the angle". So all the property lines in the neighborhood have an incorrect survey angle in the county's survey records. I know about surveying because as a young man, I worked for the USGS as an assistant surveying monument arrays across various faults in California. Steve, I thought you would enjoy my story.
Interesting story Steve! During my 1970 Christmas Break in College, I took a Surveying Class just for kicks & grins. My dad mentioned it to a new neighbor that had just moved in, and the guy went nutzo! He wanted to talk to me yesterday!!! It turned out that he was a famous geologist & needed a surveyor for the summer. I graduated in May & headed high up into the mountains the next Monday with my own IH Scout & a helper. We spent the entire Summer of 1971 staking mining claims 600' X 1500' using just what you described, a compass with a pointer, a 300' chain, a bundle of flagged lathe and 6' long 4x4's to plant in the corners & at the centerline of each claim. I'd slip the Claim Notice into a tin tobacco can & nail it to the centerline post, then on to the next claim. We staked out thousands of acres of claims in 4 states that summer. What a bomb of a job for a couple of 20 year olds! I remember that we were working in the 115 degree desert near Wikiup, Arizona for 6 weeks in July and on Sundays we'd hit the beach in Lake Havasu to hang out with some chick's near where the London Bridge was being re-assembled. One Sunday as we were crossing the desert we heard our new THEME SONG float across the airwaves..... Tommy James had just left the Shondells and released his first Solo Single, "DRAGGIN' THE LINE" baby!!! We just couldn't get enough of that song, 'cause that's exactly what we were doing every daÿ❗️❤ When fall came, the geologist wanted me to go with him to South America and do survey & assay work for him that winter. I was really tempted to go on another adventure..... UNTIL he told me stories of the times he had to fight off wild boars & kill lots of snakes! I'd already stepped squarely on a rattlesnake in the middle of the desert & had a 3 ft encounter with a bear that stood taller than my 6'4", so I said "Thank You Very Much, but NO"❗️😱 Fast forward 40 years and I was an RN administering IV drugs to an older man in our clinic. We were chatting away when I happened to mention my summer of surveying mining claims for a geologist. The man's eyes opened wide as saucers as he asked me the geologists' name. He gasped when I told him.... and then he told me the REST of the Story! The two of them were great friends 50 years earlier when working on their Engineering Degrees at the Colorado School of Mines in Denver. They went their own ways after graduation, but kept in touch. Soon, the man that I had surveyed for became the Lead Engineer in charge of planting nuclear bombs thousands of feet deep below the dessert floor in Nevada where the underground nuclear testing was done! When the nuclear testing was completed, he engineered huge magnatometers into the bellies of commercial aircraft that flew precise courses back and forth across the United States while Magnetically MAPPING most of the country! An amazing feat, and at least equal to that of the hundreds of early surveyors who mapped the country back in the days you described Steve. The geologist I worked for had near-exclusive access to all the data from this magnetic mapping & developed a way to let that data point him to large areas with super high levels of minerals, which he then mapped out into the claims I was staking & papering for him. After doing assay work on the claims to prove their worth, he would sell large parcels of them to various mining and oil drilling companies (for very big bucks.) The good news is that my boss had died as a multi-millionaire & left a legend for his wife & children. The bad news is that he died of radiation poisoning..... from his years of precisely planting those nuclear charges for testing..... Such is life, I Guess..... 👻 Thanks for letting the memories roll today Steve. And MAKE it a Wonderful Weekend ❗️❤😉
Fantastic life story!!! A classmate got a summer job on a team surveying lots for a new housing development. He talked about tramping through the woods and sticker bushes and swampy mosquito ponds. He went on to study Civil Engineering in college
A six-week field course in surveying was part of my geological engineering degree back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. One of the exercises was to find a particular survey marker with no more information than the coordinates. We were using chains (really a flat strip of metal that you have to learn how to control when rolling all 100 feet up), optical theodolites, and range rods. Kids these days using lasers and GPS aren't having half the fun or exercise we did!
We had a “surveying and mapping” class in college under the Forestry curriculum. It was a fun class, but later in a 2 week field training program where we camped at a Boys Scout camp and practiced forestry crafts including surveying. The clunky old Forest Service Compasses were forever causing problems through rough woods. On our final survey line we use a hand held little Suunto compass. We were 40 to 50 feet off our mark on our two previous surveys. On that final line we came out and searched for 10 to 15 minutes looking for our target mark. I then looked at my feet, we came out dead on it!
I once lived with surveyor. That was a bit of education. Tie that with Robert A. Heinlein's novel, 'The Door Into Summer' made this one come alive for me. Thanks, Steve, from Gabriel of Norway.
A couple of decades ago i worked in various capacities on a survey crew. This was pre-GPS. One of my favorite tasks, despite combating swarms of mosquitoes, and thorny vegetation (you haven't lived until you hit a multi flora rose vine with a machete and have it whip across your face), was working in remote areas with a metal detector and shovel, pacing distances to find iron markers that were set more than a hundred years prior.
An enjoyable biography Across the Cimarron , is the interview of a man who apprenticed as a surveyor in Allen County Indiana. The survey confirmed all the section lines, to establish when the county would be able to put in roads, without dealing with landowners. He took his trade out to the American West. First hand accounts on his relationship with Doc Holliday, Bill Tighlman, , and others he crossed paths with such as Wyatt Earp. Also how important the role of surveyors were in establishing western towns. The beginning of the Kevin Costner film series Horizon was vey telling of the man laying out lots for his hopeful town. Edit: in Indiana, the county surveyor is an elected position. You don’t have to be a surveyor. Just be a person permitted to run for any public office
You can see the other two markers (yes two and Michigan is the only state that has two ) for the intersection of the baseline and the meridian in Pleasant Lake, Michigan . There’s a small park just north of Pleasant Lake on Meridian Rd. and a short hike to see them . The RUclipsr Restless Viking did a story on this very topic and he tells you why Michigan has two intersections . Great Michigan history there .
There is a red pine in the pigeon river country state forest in Otsego County Michigan marked by William A Burt during this original land survey that was just 8 inches in diameter then, now it's a towering giant.
When I was younger we used to hunt in the Okanogan Forest in Northern Washington just a few miles from the Canadian Border. My grandfather showed me a survey marker he encountered while hunting there a few years prior, then showed me the tree nearby that had reference marks on it, then explained how they used chains and compasses to do all the measuring they did. It fascinated me that all these years later when those markers were checked by laser they were all well within an extremely tight radius to matching exactly. I can't imagine the things they encountered while doing those markings, and the conditions they dealt with.
I work as an ecological surveyor in the Florida Everglades, to keep my job simple to understand, and we work with state set survey markers constantly. One day we were looking for a certain survey marker to set our base station to run our own surveys but could not locate the marker. We had a general understanding of where it was on the map (on this bend on the levee between these two bridges, within this meter grid, etc.) but could not find it even when using a metal detector. We ended up setting up at a nearby survey marker a few kilometers away and staking out using an RTK survey (fancy GPS to keep it simple) to the lost survey marker using our set coordinates given by the nearby marker. Our instruments directed us back to the area we were originally looking for and to the exact location and depth of the marker to the centimeter. Turns put it had been covered over my dirt and vegetation over the years and ended up being buried by 10cm so we had to go dig for it a bit but once found we set up on it and the initially recorded coordinates of the marker had not changed one bit. To be frank, looking back, I almost wish we hadn't found it considering how torturous the rest of the day was having to haul a 2 meter 10 pound survey pole with all kinds of expensive equipment that could not get wet through shin deep Everglades muck and water while having to cut through dense saw-grass all while having to rush considering we lost an hour looking for the marker and had to be out by a certain time.
You might appreciate the book "Drawing the Line" -- how Mason and Dixon surveyed the most famous border in America. It's just amazing what these guys could do, out in the rough. They relied heavily on astronomy. There's just so many aspects to learn! I passed my Illinois surveying license exam in 2007, and I prepared for that exam for over a year. It takes a bachelor's in engineering plus 27 400-level semester hours in surveying just to be eligible to sit for the exam.
I believe the RUclipsr Restless Viking has covered a lot of these history stories. When I sold off some of my farm, I disagreed with the surveyors marks next to a neighbor. We always used a tree line as the border and the surveyor marked the border 10' inside the tree line.
Wow! Two Michigan hands in one post! Never seen that before but now I know how it’s done & if I ever have the need to show somebody where to go in Michigan…
It took a little digging, but I managed to find the marker on Google Streets, in Sault Ste. Marie, MI. It's located on West Pier Drive, on the north side of the road, & the east side of the train trestle. I believe the tracks belong to the Canadian National (formerly Grand Trunk Western), and still show to be an active line to Canada. Thanks Steve, for the research tip! :)
Great history! When you mentioned the use of barometers in survey work, it reminded me of a book I read earlier in the year about David Livingston. He roamed all over the African continent during his searches for the Nile River headwaters, mapping it and noting physical features of the terrain. Livingston also used a barometer to document altitude.
Those large mosquitos you mentioned are called "Chiquitos". They are the result of chickens and mosquitos breeding. Welcome to the northwoods of Wisconsin or the Upper Penninsula of Michigan.
Quite interesting, Steve, thank you for your time compiling this & the video. I wonder how many people in our 'soft society' would undertake such a monumental task today, let alone with the equipment they had to work with. Thanks again.
I have been to the marker at Sault Ste Marie. Also been to the one in the Four Corners. If you read Randolph B. Marcy's book you learn how tough it was surveying the west.
My Father was in the US Army back in the 1950's. He was part of the Combat Engineers and was what was called a Computer, he did the math. He was part of a team for survey, they did this for aiming of the big guns and so they knew what was where.
I don’t live anywhere near Michigan, but this was fascinating stuff. Appreciate the info on how they used to survey, human professional ingenuity can be pretty amazing.
I've been hearing about Screw Tube dropping people's subscriptions and you are the first that I've experienced myself. I did resubscribe & will keep an eye out to see if it happens on your channel again.
Reminds of a guy I knew who worked on crews stringing power lines across impossible terrain. “Never, EVER buy a truck that was involved in that work. We did horrible things to those trucks” He described having a line of truck needing to get up a clearly impossible grade carrying heavy cable, and tying them to an even longer line of trucks on the opposing down slope, and via ruthless brute force dragging the whole mess up the grade.
I live near the meridian and baseline intersection (20 miles +/-) and went to see quite a few years ago. It was in a guys back yard and not accessible. I hear there is now access to go see it and it a small state park. I was always curious because we farm and report our fields to the USDA using Township, Range, and section coordinates.
Steve, the old metes and bounds system produced chaos in real estate until the Northwest Territory was required to scientifically survey each new state there, including Michigan and Ohio. All deeds in that 5 state region can be traced back to the original platting. This guaranteed the soundness of real estate titles/deeds in the region. This was a real breakthrough in real estate law (establishing quiet title of whole states).
@@edkrausmixengineer By my calculation maybe a centimeter. Each link was a straight piece of stiff wire with a loop on each end. The links were joined by small rings. Every tenth ring was brass to make counting simpler. The rings would stretch and have to be readjusted regularly. The thermal expansion seems small by comparison to all the other sources of error.
Steve I worked as a surveyor in Louisiana in the 70 's and often we would have to make property survey descriptions for plot plans and some of the description's that were written in the 1700 s' would read like this white ok tree 2 feet in diameter with X 7 feet pine tree 2 feet diameter with X 5 feet the "X" was a carved X in the tree now know as a witness tree you would then take your Chain and measure those distances to intersect a point ... continue reading the description for what is in the ground sometimes it would read confederates rifle barrel used as corner stake and low and behold there it would be we would of course take into consideration the growth of the witness trees also when we used the chain which is actually a 101 foot long we also used a plumb bob to attempt to keep the chain as level as possible we almost always "closed within one tenth of a foot per section of land amazing later we went to EDM's the electronic stuff and we would re survey property as per new owners or logging and find that we were dead on or that close.
The 40th parallel goes through Boulder, CO and we also have a Baseline street and road. My friend from Vermont would pronounce it like it rhymed with Vaseline; Bass uh leen street.
I bought a small piece of land in the early nineties by Indian River. It was described in Rods. Returning to work in a construction crew I asked, “How long is a Rod?” Answer came back. “Threaded or plain?” (16.5 feet)
I just looked up on google how to measure height using a barometer. As an ex-physics student from far too many years ago than I care to remember, I knew it was possible, but wanted to read up about it. Apparently, this was a question from a professor to his students in how to measure the height of a building using a barometer. I like one answer given ..... drop the barometer from the top of the building and measure the time taken for it to hit the ground. The height can then easily be calculated.
I heard the way to measure the height of a building with a barometer is to find the building superintendent and offer to give him the barometer if he tells you the building's height
Fun tidbit, if you're in a part of the US that predates 1785, you don't use the Public Land Survey System, and instead use the metes and bounds system which describes land in relation to natural landmarks. While the center of a town may be platted and it's been extended since, there aren't nice grid dividing lines out east.
It takes longer to become a surveyor that it does to become a lawyer. In some states it can take up to 10 years, but more often it is closer to 5 years. And that is AFTER you earn a bachelor degree.
They would have had to use theodolite to lay out a triangulation grid. BTW the chains they used in the 1840s were 66 feet long. Not the invar steel tapes up to 300 ft long that became common in the twentieth century.
@@PerVerdonk Yes, I don't know if they did it in the 1840s, as there were far greater sources for error in play that really couldn't be compensated for, heavily forested hill for one. There are some wildly non standard sections in the foothills of the Cascades in Washington state.
My State was a colony so they didn't do that. They didn't even get the boundary between North and South Carolina correct and that is why it has its current shape.
The first theodolites were made in the 18th century, I think. Originally for astronomy and navigation. Probably adapted for land surveying by the turn of the 19th century.
Where do the base line and the meridian line intersect? My contribution, look on a map of the Midwest, lay a ruler across Baseline Road, across the state, Lake Michigan and your ruler will be on the southern border of Wisconsin. How the hell!-----Wikipedia answer for my question en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian-Baseline_State_Park
I’m in the oil and gas business and over the years I have found that many of the historic surveys are as accurate or more accurate than some modern surveys. Amazing what those guys did with primitive technology and doing math in their heads! 🗺️🧭
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
For all the technological marvels we have now, what was accomplished centuries ago strikes me as FAR more remarkable.
The fact that folks understood that atmospheric pressure decreased with altitude before modern meteorology and climate science is kind of mind-blowing. They didn't rely on GPS, and such. They were doing the groundwork on which modern day knowledge is founded.
I owned a house in San Jose, CA. I had a property line dispute with a neighbor. We hired a surveyor who moved the corner of the property a foot on my side. This put the edge of the property a foot inside my 90 year old garage. I had the surveyor re-find the from the next street over. and the corner of the property was now a foot on the neighbor's property.
Back in the late 1800's the surveyor botched what is called "turning the angle". So all the property lines in the neighborhood have an incorrect survey angle in the county's survey records.
I know about surveying because as a young man, I worked for the USGS as an assistant surveying monument arrays across various faults in California.
Steve, I thought you would enjoy my story.
Interesting story Steve! During my 1970 Christmas Break in College, I took a Surveying Class just for kicks & grins. My dad mentioned it to a new neighbor that had just moved in, and the guy went nutzo! He wanted to talk to me yesterday!!!
It turned out that he was a famous geologist & needed a surveyor for the summer. I graduated in May & headed high up into the mountains the next Monday with my own IH Scout & a helper. We spent the entire Summer of 1971 staking mining claims 600' X 1500' using just what you described, a compass with a pointer, a 300' chain, a bundle of flagged lathe and 6' long 4x4's to plant in the corners & at the centerline of each claim.
I'd slip the Claim Notice into a tin tobacco can & nail it to the centerline post, then on to the next claim. We staked out thousands of acres of claims in 4 states that summer. What a bomb of a job for a couple of 20 year olds!
I remember that we were working in the 115 degree desert near Wikiup, Arizona for 6 weeks in July and on Sundays we'd hit the beach in Lake Havasu to hang out with some chick's near where the London Bridge was being re-assembled.
One Sunday as we were crossing the desert we heard our new THEME SONG float across the airwaves..... Tommy James had just left the Shondells and released his first Solo Single, "DRAGGIN' THE LINE" baby!!! We just couldn't get enough of that song, 'cause that's exactly what we were doing every daÿ❗️❤
When fall came, the geologist wanted me to go with him to South America and do survey & assay work for him that winter. I was really tempted to go on another adventure..... UNTIL he told me stories of the times he had to fight off wild boars & kill lots of snakes! I'd already stepped squarely on a rattlesnake in the middle of the desert & had a 3 ft encounter with a bear that stood taller than my 6'4", so I said "Thank You Very Much, but NO"❗️😱
Fast forward 40 years and I was an RN administering IV drugs to an older man in our clinic. We were chatting away when I happened to mention my summer of surveying mining claims for a geologist. The man's eyes opened wide as saucers as he asked me the geologists' name. He gasped when I told him.... and then he told me the REST of the Story!
The two of them were great friends 50 years earlier when working on their Engineering Degrees at the Colorado School of Mines in Denver. They went their own ways after graduation, but kept in touch. Soon, the man that I had surveyed for became the Lead Engineer in charge of planting nuclear bombs thousands of feet deep below the dessert floor in Nevada where the underground nuclear testing was done!
When the nuclear testing was completed, he engineered huge magnatometers into the bellies of commercial aircraft that flew precise courses back and forth across the United States while Magnetically MAPPING most of the country! An amazing feat, and at least equal to that of the hundreds of early surveyors who mapped the country back in the days you described Steve.
The geologist I worked for had near-exclusive access to all the data from this magnetic mapping & developed a way to let that data point him to large areas with super high levels of minerals, which he then mapped out into the claims I was staking & papering for him. After doing assay work on the claims to prove their worth, he would sell large parcels of them to various mining and oil drilling companies (for very big bucks.)
The good news is that my boss had died as a multi-millionaire & left a legend for his wife & children. The bad news is that he died of radiation poisoning..... from his years of precisely planting those nuclear charges for testing..... Such is life, I Guess..... 👻
Thanks for letting the memories roll today Steve. And MAKE it a Wonderful Weekend ❗️❤😉
Fantastic life story!!! A classmate got a summer job on a team surveying lots for a new housing development. He talked about tramping through the woods and sticker bushes and swampy mosquito ponds. He went on to study Civil Engineering in college
Great story! Kismet!
Awesome story thanks for sharing!
A six-week field course in surveying was part of my geological engineering degree back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. One of the exercises was to find a particular survey marker with no more information than the coordinates. We were using chains (really a flat strip of metal that you have to learn how to control when rolling all 100 feet up), optical theodolites, and range rods. Kids these days using lasers and GPS aren't having half the fun or exercise we did!
Had fun with those error of closure calculations? Bleh. 32 years later and still not enough time has passed!
Nor do they know that an acre is 144 square chains. 😳
We had a “surveying and mapping” class in college under the Forestry curriculum. It was a fun class, but later in a 2 week field training program where we camped at a Boys Scout camp and practiced forestry crafts including surveying. The clunky old Forest Service Compasses were forever causing problems through rough woods. On our final survey line we use a hand held little Suunto compass. We were 40 to 50 feet off our mark on our two previous surveys. On that final line we came out and searched for 10 to 15 minutes looking for our target mark. I then looked at my feet, we came out dead on it!
I once lived with surveyor. That was a bit of education. Tie that with Robert A. Heinlein's novel, 'The Door Into Summer' made this one come alive for me.
Thanks, Steve, from Gabriel of Norway.
@@williamdegnan4718no it’s not. It’s ten square chains.
A couple of decades ago i worked in various capacities on a survey crew. This was pre-GPS. One of my favorite tasks, despite combating swarms of mosquitoes, and thorny vegetation (you haven't lived until you hit a multi flora rose vine with a machete and have it whip across your face), was working in remote areas with a metal detector and shovel, pacing distances to find iron markers that were set more than a hundred years prior.
It amazes me the wealth of information that Steve knows and can recall from the past is amazing
William Burt was the inventor of the solar compass, used for land surveys across the country, Yet he only attended school until the 6th grade.
An enjoyable biography Across the Cimarron , is the interview of a man who apprenticed as a surveyor in Allen County Indiana. The survey confirmed all the section lines, to establish when the county would be able to put in roads, without dealing with landowners.
He took his trade out to the American West. First hand accounts on his relationship with Doc Holliday, Bill Tighlman, , and others he crossed paths with such as Wyatt Earp. Also how important the role of surveyors were in establishing western towns.
The beginning of the Kevin Costner film series Horizon was vey telling of the man laying out lots for his hopeful town.
Edit: in Indiana, the county surveyor is an elected position. You don’t have to be a surveyor. Just be a person permitted to run for any public office
You can see the other two markers (yes two and Michigan is the only state that has two ) for the intersection of the baseline and the meridian in Pleasant Lake, Michigan . There’s a small park just north of Pleasant Lake on Meridian Rd. and a short hike to see them . The RUclipsr Restless Viking did a story on this very topic and he tells you why Michigan has two intersections . Great Michigan history there .
There is a red pine in the pigeon river country state forest in Otsego County Michigan marked by William A Burt during this original land survey that was just 8 inches in diameter then, now it's a towering giant.
When I was younger we used to hunt in the Okanogan Forest in Northern Washington just a few miles from the Canadian Border. My grandfather showed me a survey marker he encountered while hunting there a few years prior, then showed me the tree nearby that had reference marks on it, then explained how they used chains and compasses to do all the measuring they did. It fascinated me that all these years later when those markers were checked by laser they were all well within an extremely tight radius to matching exactly. I can't imagine the things they encountered while doing those markings, and the conditions they dealt with.
Stayed in Douglass Houghton Hall my freshman year at Tech. 1969-70.
Thx for all the videos.
I work as an ecological surveyor in the Florida Everglades, to keep my job simple to understand, and we work with state set survey markers constantly. One day we were looking for a certain survey marker to set our base station to run our own surveys but could not locate the marker. We had a general understanding of where it was on the map (on this bend on the levee between these two bridges, within this meter grid, etc.) but could not find it even when using a metal detector. We ended up setting up at a nearby survey marker a few kilometers away and staking out using an RTK survey (fancy GPS to keep it simple) to the lost survey marker using our set coordinates given by the nearby marker. Our instruments directed us back to the area we were originally looking for and to the exact location and depth of the marker to the centimeter. Turns put it had been covered over my dirt and vegetation over the years and ended up being buried by 10cm so we had to go dig for it a bit but once found we set up on it and the initially recorded coordinates of the marker had not changed one bit. To be frank, looking back, I almost wish we hadn't found it considering how torturous the rest of the day was having to haul a 2 meter 10 pound survey pole with all kinds of expensive equipment that could not get wet through shin deep Everglades muck and water while having to cut through dense saw-grass all while having to rush considering we lost an hour looking for the marker and had to be out by a certain time.
You might appreciate the book "Drawing the Line" -- how Mason and Dixon surveyed the most famous border in America. It's just amazing what these guys could do, out in the rough. They relied heavily on astronomy. There's just so many aspects to learn! I passed my Illinois surveying license exam in 2007, and I prepared for that exam for over a year. It takes a bachelor's in engineering plus 27 400-level semester hours in surveying just to be eligible to sit for the exam.
I have seen the survey marker in Port Jervis, NY that marks the boundary point of NY, NJ, and PA. It is underneath I84 and accessible from a cemetery
Based on the title I thought I was in for another story of neighbor’s lawnmower vs property line marker. 😂
I believe the RUclipsr Restless Viking has covered a lot of these history stories.
When I sold off some of my farm, I disagreed with the surveyors marks next to a neighbor. We always used a tree line as the border and the surveyor marked the border 10' inside the tree line.
Wow! Two Michigan hands in one post! Never seen that before but now I know how it’s done & if I ever have the need to show somebody where to go in Michigan…
It can be heavy repetitive work.
Any apprentice surveyer is accustomed to using an axe or a chainsaw. And yes, mosquitoes and black flies.
It took a little digging, but I managed to find the marker on Google Streets, in Sault Ste. Marie, MI. It's located on West Pier Drive, on the north side of the road, & the east side of the train trestle. I believe the tracks belong to the Canadian National (formerly Grand Trunk Western), and still show to be an active line to Canada.
Thanks Steve, for the research tip! :)
I love it when you cover Michigan history!
Great history! When you mentioned the use of barometers in survey work, it reminded me of a book I read earlier in the year about David Livingston. He roamed all over the African continent during his searches for the Nile River headwaters, mapping it and noting physical features of the terrain. Livingston also used a barometer to document altitude.
Wish I would have known this last week when I was there for work
Those large mosquitos you mentioned are called "Chiquitos". They are the result of chickens and mosquitos breeding. Welcome to the northwoods of Wisconsin or the Upper Penninsula of Michigan.
Quite interesting, Steve, thank you for your time compiling this & the video. I wonder how many people in our 'soft society' would undertake such a monumental task today, let alone with the equipment they had to work with. Thanks again.
Thank you for encouraging me to appreciate my state's history.
I have been to the marker at Sault Ste Marie. Also been to the one in the Four Corners. If you read Randolph B. Marcy's book you learn how tough it was surveying the west.
My Father was in the US Army back in the 1950's. He was part of the Combat Engineers and was what was called a Computer, he did the math. He was part of a team for survey, they did this for aiming of the big guns and so they knew what was where.
I don’t live anywhere near Michigan, but this was fascinating stuff. Appreciate the info on how they used to survey, human professional ingenuity can be pretty amazing.
I've been hearing about Screw Tube dropping people's subscriptions and you are the first that I've experienced myself. I did resubscribe & will keep an eye out to see if it happens on your channel again.
Great story Steve!
Very interesting Steve! Thanks for sharing.
Reminds of a guy I knew who worked on crews stringing power lines across impossible terrain. “Never, EVER buy a truck that was involved in that work. We did horrible things to those trucks” He described having a line of truck needing to get up a clearly impossible grade carrying heavy cable, and tying them to an even longer line of trucks on the opposing down slope, and via ruthless brute force dragging the whole mess up the grade.
GMC CCKW 353s?
@@Gabby-bot he was not specific. Basically, whatever they had needed to go, and no matter what, they made it go.
I live near the meridian and baseline intersection (20 miles +/-) and went to see quite a few years ago. It was in a guys back yard and not accessible. I hear there is now access to go see it and it a small state park. I was always curious because we farm and report our fields to the USDA using Township, Range, and section coordinates.
Steve, the old metes and bounds system produced chaos in real estate until the Northwest Territory was required to scientifically survey each new state there, including Michigan and Ohio. All deeds in that 5 state region can be traced back to the original platting. This guaranteed the soundness of real estate titles/deeds in the region. This was a real breakthrough in real estate law (establishing quiet title of whole states).
Thanks Steve- love when you do the history stufff.
Dang! I was in Sault Ste. Marie just last week! I did not know about this and no mention was made in various tourist brochures.
What a great story. The chains they used were 66 feet long with 100 links at 8 inches each.
And it was really rough to get a first down. 😺
@@HariSeldon913 Fortunately, at the time defenses consisted mostly of inanimate objects like trees, rocks, streams, swamps, cliffs etc.
It just occurred to me. Wouldn't the chain-length vary an inch or two with its change in temperature?
@@edkrausmixengineer nowhere near that much in normal conditions, and for precision work, there correction charts for temperature.
@@edkrausmixengineer By my calculation maybe a centimeter. Each link was a straight piece of stiff wire with a loop on each end. The links were joined by small rings. Every tenth ring was brass to make counting simpler. The rings would stretch and have to be readjusted regularly. The thermal expansion seems small by comparison to all the other sources of error.
Great Video! Thanks!
Very cool information. I had no idea how that was done.
Steve I worked as a surveyor in Louisiana in the 70 's and often we would have to make property survey descriptions for plot plans and some of the description's that were written in the 1700 s' would read like this white ok tree 2 feet in diameter with X 7 feet pine tree 2 feet diameter with X 5 feet the "X" was a carved X in the tree now know as a witness tree you would then take your Chain and measure those distances to intersect a point ... continue reading the description for what is in the ground sometimes it would read confederates rifle barrel used as corner stake and low and behold there it would be we would of course take into consideration the growth of the witness trees also when we used the chain which is actually a 101 foot long we also used a plumb bob to attempt to keep the chain as level as possible we almost always "closed within one tenth of a foot per section of land amazing later we went to EDM's the electronic stuff and we would re survey property as per new owners or logging and find that we were dead on or that close.
Fascinating.
Cool facts. Thank you for sharing.
The 40th parallel goes through Boulder, CO and we also have a Baseline street and road. My friend from Vermont would pronounce it like it rhymed with Vaseline; Bass uh leen street.
I’m going to guess traveling through wilderness like that over months of time they had a sizable support crew to make and break camps and feed them.
I bought a small piece of land in the early nineties by Indian River. It was described in Rods. Returning to work in a construction crew I asked, “How long is a Rod?” Answer came back. “Threaded or plain?” (16.5 feet)
The 4 Points intersection of 4 US States isn't where it appears on the Highway, the maps or gmaps, it's on Sacred Indian Gravesites a mile away!
Fascinating
When the gales of November blow early.
Right!!
Hi Steve 😊 have a great weekend
I just looked up on google how to measure height using a barometer. As an ex-physics student from far too many years ago than I care to remember, I knew it was possible, but wanted to read up about it. Apparently, this was a question from a professor to his students in how to measure the height of a building using a barometer. I like one answer given ..... drop the barometer from the top of the building and measure the time taken for it to hit the ground. The height can then easily be calculated.
I heard the way to measure the height of a building with a barometer is to find the building superintendent and offer to give him the barometer if he tells you the building's height
Interesting thank you! 👍🏻
Fun tidbit, if you're in a part of the US that predates 1785, you don't use the Public Land Survey System, and instead use the metes and bounds system which describes land in relation to natural landmarks. While the center of a town may be platted and it's been extended since, there aren't nice grid dividing lines out east.
They also had to take into account temperature. Steel expands with increasing temperature.
This is actually pretty interesting.
It’s often been said Lake Michigan never gives up her dead when the gales of October come early
Wrong lake, wrong month
I've been told that George Washington was a surveyor.
Yea and he slept there.
Yes, he was, and he surveyed the Great Dismal Swamp as it ran through his property.
Abe Lincoln too!
It takes longer to become a surveyor that it does to become a lawyer. In some states it can take up to 10 years, but more often it is closer to 5 years. And that is AFTER you earn a bachelor degree.
Ben hood surfing on the Turbine car.
Where I live we have a Meridian road.
Any good stories about the lift bridge in Houghton? I don't think I've seen anything even remotely similar anywhere else.
Or why the lake Houghton Lake is in the lower peninsula?
This is history
Hi, Steve Do you know how deep Higgins Lake is ?
Michigan and Indiana are working on resurveying their border.
I've seen one in new york state
Yes it is Friday
So My Question is How Did They Measure Across The Lakes With a Chain, as the Chain Would Sink or Did They Use Canoes or Boats...
They would have had to use theodolite to lay out a triangulation grid.
BTW the chains they used in the 1840s were 66 feet long. Not the invar steel tapes up to 300 ft long that became common in the twentieth century.
I think I read someplace they did a lot of lakes when there was ice. Also they compensated for chain expansion according to the temperature.
@@PerVerdonk Yes, I don't know if they did it in the 1840s, as there were far greater sources for error in play that really couldn't be compensated for, heavily forested hill for one. There are some wildly non standard sections in the foothills of the Cascades in Washington state.
That screen grab intro photo looks like an, Eer, joint pass. 😅
I definitely took a second look at that too! 😌
Defiance, Ohio? I went to a funeral there in March of last year.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
What in the world? When did you change the name of the channel?
Modern equipment found that Four Corners is off by a significant amount
Actually, the actual measurements have moved over time due to the Earth's rotation, procession and magnetic North Pole moving.
My State was a colony so they didn't do that. They didn't even get the boundary between North and South Carolina correct and that is why it has its current shape.
Idk if this was asked before. What's the history between the survey and the toledo war?
EB Friday 🎉
Ben on hood and top of turbine car .
When did transits become usable
The first theodolites were made in the 18th century, I think. Originally for astronomy and navigation. Probably adapted for land surveying by the turn of the 19th century.
I remember the original video.
There a road in Arizona call baseline road and it 43 mile long
How about the tri state stone marker michigan ohio and indiana after the toledo wars .
These types of difficulties is why the 'Northwest Angle' in Minnesota exists instead of it being in Canada where common sense would have it.
mosquitos this big lol
no, really, they are the UP's "state bird".
When did we get clocks, by which to measure Longitude?
If I were going to Sue Saint Marie, would I burn in Hell?
Íñdíaña súrveyór fór 30 yrs .
Steve, I know a guy named Higgins here in San Diego and he has family up in Canada. Case solved
If you haven't read Michigan's Columbus by Steve... you're wrong. Fix yourself.
I only like your vault episodes when you are complaining about all th stupid emails and comments;
I'll do a video about this comment next week.
@@SteveLehtoVault
Lol
@@SteveLehtoVault
Please do!
Google.
Didn't like the word sexton. Or is it Saxton?
FIRST.
Where do the base line and the meridian line intersect? My contribution, look on a map of the Midwest, lay a ruler across Baseline Road, across the state, Lake Michigan and your ruler will be on the southern border of Wisconsin. How the hell!-----Wikipedia answer for my question en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian-Baseline_State_Park
I’m in the oil and gas business and over the years I have found that many of the historic surveys are as accurate or more accurate than some modern surveys. Amazing what those guys did with primitive technology and doing math in their heads! 🗺️🧭