I think people should know more about Cadastral surveying. For me, this is as exciting as the search for the Holy Grail and frankly, anyone involved in mining is so deeply reliant on the silent, underlying world of land status (and therefore surveys) that they could not even put a shovel in the ground if someone weren’t keeping a geographic reference to their position in real world projected space (planet Earth, so far).
Cadastral survey is the BLM’s stable of knights entrusted with the ultimate authority to designate the legal location of land rights – this is one of the oldest issues related to evolution of our civilization’s personal identification of the individual: the right to own land.
Our nation’s grid of township and range is the federal government’s infrastructure for tracking the people’s right to own land. By that, I mean these boundaries define the legal perimeter of our rights as property owners. Therefore, the federal government’s role is to protect the people’s rights by conducting surveys.
“Surveys create, mark, define, retrace, or reestablish the boundaries and subdivisions of the public lands of the United States. They are not like scientific surveys of an informative character, which may be amended due to the availability of additional information or because of changes in conditions or standards of accuracy. Although Cadastral surveys employ scientific methods and precise measurements, they are based upon law and not upon science. Cadastral surveys are the foundation upon which rest title to all land that is now, or was once, part of the Public Domain of the United States.”
This is because the origin of law in the United States is traced back through our constitution to the courts of either England (or in the case of small areas of Louisiana – to France.) Cadastral was the King’s branch of legal authority for keeping track of who had so many cows and pigs and chickens and where did they live – for taxation purposes but also for defining such things as who to protect from invading Huns and Scots and Germanic tribes. Medieval Cadastral utilized one of the first GIS by providing a graphic map with tabular data to the King for tracking purposes of his realm’s assets. (Yes, you heard it here first: Medieval GIS, though I know the Egyptians and Chinese also used graphic maps with tabular data to make ancient GIS systems)
“The practice of finding boundaries is neither a purely legal process, nor a purely scientific process. It is something in between with a twist. The boundary surveyor in finding an old survey must be cognizant of the legal description of the land and any conflicts which may affect it. This involves not only knowledge but skills in research and investigation. Then the surveyor must be part archeologist to find physical evidence of previous surveys and occupation on the ground. Throughout the process the surveyor must understand the concepts of good measurements to find and describe what is found, and be able to interpret it’s relationship to the record. In the end those that do it well find it can be rewarding and fun, sort of as mathematical detective work, with archeology, dendrology, geology and paralegal aspects thrown in. So we sometimes use the old saying “Land Surveying” is both an art and a science. ”
All I know, is that corners can roam, county assessor’s titled plats do not stand up in a court of law, and malicious neighbors can hold a pith fork in your face and force you off your property and keep your land if they want to, but the guys at Cadastral are right on when it comes to explaining the state of our land status to us citizens (and they win in civil court). That said, you always start with BLM in matters of land status for mining claims or metes and bound parcels of both surface and mineral rights (severed mineral rights being in another blog one day).
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