Cadastral Survey Training Program. Notes on History of Public Land
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88001609 w«^2£* BUREAU OF *pg$tt\ MANAGEMENT Cadas Bureau DSC 3EMENT BUREAU OF I Deir 63 |ureau of la ement per,- 2 iter CHAPTER PAGE LOCATION ERRATA (change) COPY SHOULD READ i 18 2 Line 1 - Right Hand Richard E. (Elmer) Bardy Richard E. (Elmer) Bandy Caption 18 9 Line 4 - Lower Caption Heister's Survey Party Hiester's Survey Party 18 20 Line 2 - Lower Caption Moving camp. T.5N., R.TE. Moving camp. T.5N., R.7E., 20 1 Line 2 - Right Hand Parallel North, T.37N., Parallel North, T.37N., Caption R.ZE. , Arizona R.2E. , Arizona 20 9 Line 6 - -Top Caption A. N. Kimmell, Thomas E. A. N. Kimmell, Thomas E. Heister Hiester 20 18 • Line 1 - Right Hand Emil Voight ( ) Emil Voigt (pipe and all) Caption . 7 -" FOREWORD Cadastral surveys are performed to create, mark, and define or to retrace the boundaries between abutting land owners and, more particularly, between land of the Federal Government and private owners or local governments. As referred to here, cadastral surveys were performed only by the General Land Office during its existence and by the Bureau of Land Management. The Bureau of Land Management is the only agency which is currently authorized to determine boundaries of the public lands of the United States. Proper understanding of the basis for performance of cadastral surveys includes an understanding of the history of the public land surveys. An understanding of that history requires some consideration of the people who performed these surveys and of the people whose land was affected by them. these notes were prepared as an aid in training cadastral surveyors in the application of surveying principles. The learner is expected to gain from the factual material on survey laws and their formation as well as from a study of the people who performed the surveys. Many of the men who had an important role in the history of cadastral surveying are still living but only those who have retired are included in the present document. " PROP' \ I INTRODUCTION In March of 1836, Congress received a report from Ethan A. Brown, Commissioner of the General Land Office. It included the following: "...it is respectfully suggested that the surveys are at the base of the ." land system. The surveys to which he referred are cadastral surveys. These are the surveys which create, mark, define, retrace, or reestablish the boundaries and subdivisions of the public lands of the United States . 11 Ethan Allen Brown, Commissioner of the General Land Office, 1835-36 CONTENTS FOREWORD i ILLUSTRATIONS 11 INTRODUCTION ii EARLY SURVEYS WITH THE SOLAR COMPASS 12 FRONTISPIECE iii THE FAR WEST 13 ANCIENT SURVEYS 1 THE PROBLEMS OF PRIVATE CLAIMS 14 COLONIAL AMERICA 2 THE RUGGED YEARS; THE HARDSHIPS 15 ILLUSTRATIONS 3 THE RUGGED YEARS; THE SUCCESSES 16 THE MASON-DIXON LINE 4 THE SCANDALOUS YEARS 17 THE TRANSITION 5 ILLUSTRATIONS 18 THE BEGINNING OF THE RECTANGULAR SURVEYS 6 SURVEYS AND SURVEYORS 19 THE SEVEN RANGES 7 ILLUSTRATIONS 20 THE ELLICOTTS AND BENJAMIN BANNEKER 8 THE DIRECT SYSTEM 21 EARLY SURVEYS IN INDIANA 9 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 22 THE REFINEMENT OF THE CADASTRAL SURVEY SYSTEM 10 . , ANCIENT SURVEYS "When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a t» compass upon the face of the depth: Proverbs 8:27 When an individual first felt the desire to passions. To the surveyor must go the credit possess land the need for the work of a cadas- for the lessening of disagreements over tral surveyor became inevitable. This occur- property lines rence is lost in antiquity, as is the moment Surveying itself has no "point of beginning". when man first found he could strike flint and We know that a very ancient clay tablet exists. make fire his servant, or the first time man It is Assyrian in origin, and was found at Nuzi perceived the principle of the wheel. near Kirkuk. It dates from the dynasty of Before recorded history, cave men claimed Sargon of Akkad, well over 5,000 years ago. their homes and hunting grounds by right of Scratched into its surface is a map, showing occupancy and a large club. Disputes over a surveyed part of what is now called Iraq boundaries have always, along with God, poli- (northern Mesopotamia). (34) tics, and taxes, awakened men's hidden 1-1 1-2 The Egyptians, under the Pharaohs, devised district, the province, and the location. The extremely precise methods of measurement. name of the surveyor is also given, along with The Great Pyramid of Gizeh (Khufu) is the most the fact that it was an official survey and famous example. Its base is oriented in the established the land as the property of Gula- cardinal directions. The four sides (9,068.8 Eresh. The translation also gives, at great inches) have an average error of just six- length, the numerous curses to be called down tenths of an inch in length and twelve seconds upon the head of anyone so foolish as to move in angle from a perfect square. It was con- the stone. (94) structed about 4700 B.C. (so) No record A surveying instrument was found in the ruins exists today of the methods the Egyptians of Pompeii. It was a groma, of the type used used, or of their equipment. We do know that by the Romans in dividing land to be distri- they were concerned with the survey of land buted to veterans. The groma had four arms, lines for purposes of taxation. The land in set at 90 degrees to one another, with which the Nile Valley had to be surveyed over and the corners of rectangular plots were estab- over because of the yearly flooding of the lished. The Roman system of land subdivision Nile. was called agro centuriato, land divided into Three or four thousand years ago the Babylon- hundreds. (34) Julius Caesar ruled Rome when ians took their surveying seriously. There agro centuriato was introduced. He died 44 are in existence today a few of the boundary years before the birth of Christ, but the sub- stones set during that period. One of them division pattern created by different land uses has much carving upon it, most of which has under this survey system is still visible from been translated into English. It refers to the air. (36) the size of the land, five gur of corn-land, Long before the reign of Caesar, the first measured by the great cubit. It gives the five books of the Old Testament were written, 1-3 The Graf -Wellhausen theory says that these The reed was an instrument used in measuring, five books, the Pentateuch, at one time con- and according to Ezekiel 40:5, it was 6 cubits sisted of four major documents which were long. The measurement of land was related in combined into a single literary unit about 1 Samuel 14:14, to the area a team of oxen could the 400 B.C. (33) Many times within plow in 1 day. In some places area was indicated Pentateuch, and in the rest of the Bible, as the part of a field which could be seeded to reference is made to the survey of land. barley in 1 day. In Mesopotamia the meaning of "acres" as used in Isaiah 5:10, was about two- Biblical units of measure were simple and none fifths of our present acre. (33) too exact. For the most part they consisted of approximates arrived at by the use of ones About 500 years before the birth of Christ, body. The cubit was the length of a man's Pythagoras, the Greek, suggested that the arm from his elbow to his extended finger tip, earth might be spherical rather than flat. about 18 inches. A span was the reach of a Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who lived from 276 man's outstretched hand, from finger tip to B.C. until 196 B.C., thought he was right. finger tip, or about 9 inches. A palm was Eratosthenes was an intellectual type who all four fingers, or about 3 inches. A finger became the head of the Alexandrian Library. was about three- fourths of an inch. Two spans His intellectual curiosity paid off when he equalled 1 cubit. learned that, at the peak of the summer sol- stice, the sun illuminated a deep vertical In Ezekiel 40:5 and 43:13 a long cubit is men- well in Syene . At noon, on the longest day tioned. It is compared to a cubit and a hand of the year, he measured the angle of the breadth. The Acts 27:28 mentions fathoms. This shadow cast by a vertical wall in Alexandria. was the length of a man's outstretched arms, or It was equal to one-fiftieth of a circle. He about 6 feet. thought that Alexandria and Syene were on a 1-4 direct north-south line, and he knew the accepted distance between the two cities. His theory, based upon his observations, was that the distance between the cities was equal to one-fiftieth of the circumference of the earth. He came very close. He used units of length called stadia and, because of compensating errors, came up with a distance of 24,662 miles. Since the earth is not a perfect sphere, and Syene and Alexandria are not exactly the distance apart that he used, and are not on a perfect north-south line, he was a little off. The real figure is 24,899 miles . (3 4) This was the first attempt to find the size of Eratosthenes' application of basic geometry in determining the the earth by measuring the arc of a meridian.