Property Markers?

[TMS]

We recently purchased some remote property, and while snowmachining in and around the area this past weekend, we came across some old property markers. They were just posts in the ground and had a piece of tin nailed to them that contained the name and address of the owner. In reviewing documents from the Recorder's office, etc. there are no properties in the area in which these two markers are located (two different spots, two different owner names). I even did a search on properties with the given names and neither search showed these people to have property in this area. Has anyone ran into this before??

[Rovingarcher]

Own the property...

Yeah, we have lots of folks who think they are land barrons, especially around hunting season.They post my land ,state land, anything they think will be a good bet to attract a hunter.They own it till someone calls then on it which isn't too often.GR

[AGL4now]

Many of the mining claims are so marked......

[upstream]

Check the names against registered land surveyors, or look over the plat of your property or that of the closest property to see the surveyors name(s). These might be some old control points for surveying or.............................

[Michael]

During some of the remote staking programs the potential leasor staked out their parcel with a post and metal tag, then went back to DNR with the dimensions and location of their parcel. After it was approved by DNR they had to get a survey done. The surveyor would at that time set a permanent monument near the post and establish 3 bearing trees to help locate it. If there is no monument, it is not a property corner. It is in all probablility a claimants staking corner. Ask DNR to see if the name was at onetime a leaseholder for a remote or Open to Entry parcel.

A lot of people staked land and then let it go back to the state rather than pay for a survey.

[TWB]

What is the general area? Talkeetna, Petersville, Eureka??

[TMS]

The property is up the Yentna River..... I bet these markers are a result of what was described below - staked property let back to the state. I will check with DNR on them and see what kind of records they have. I know they do not belong to a registered surveyor as (small world) one of the posts belongs to an acquaintance of the company I work for and his careet path never led him into the surveying field. I have tried to reach him since discovering this but, like many other Alaskan's at the moment, he is outside enjoying some heat in his sun.

[hiline]

Bet they are old homestead land that was never prove up on they are all over out here from the west side of Beluga to the Tal. We were the fourth ones to file on our land a lot of land out here was open to homesteading in the '70's thru the '90's.

[TWB]

If you have a last name, and by being legitimately owned by someone, taxes would be paid every year....you can go here and check it out...but you'll need name..or lot # to get the right results.

http://www.matsugov.us/myproperty/

[aksnowmo]

Corners?

Try this site. If you can find the surveyed lot, there are programs that will help convert the corners to GPS coordinates and then find the monuments or rebar.

http://gis.matsugov.us/landman_external/viewer.htm

[TWB]

Try this site. If you can find the surveyed lot, there are programs that will help convert the corners to GPS coordinates and then find the monuments or rebar.

http://gis.matsugov.us/landman_external/viewer.htm

I used that site and found some property I purchased but wasn't able to convert anything to corner coordinates? I believe it all depends on how long ago the land was surveyed...i.e. old school plat maps, or the new survey style map sheet.

[NRick]

Try this site. If you can find the surveyed lot, there are programs that will help convert the corners to GPS coordinates and then find the monuments or rebar.

What programs convert to GPS coordinates? I've got the platt for my area and I need to reroute a trail and want to keep it off of anyone's lot. Try as I might, I could not find their lot corners.

[TWB]

What programs convert to GPS coordinates? I've got the platt for my area and I need to reroute a trail and want to keep it off of anyone's lot. Try as I might, I could not find their lot corners.

Close to impossible to establish actual XY coordinates that would be usable in say, GPS format. Back when plat maps were the real deal there might have been a few actual XY coords to get you into the area, the rest was a needle compass establishing lot line bearing from point a to b, the rest was a tape measure. What you see on the lot lines looking at you plat map and just the heading that the surveyor walked, not an actual point. At the very least there should be corner markers in a stake or bronze cap style.

[AKDoug]

Michael is right on the money. It's most likely posts from an original staker that didn't get approved or didn't have their survey done.

As far as plat maps being nothing more than a surveyor following a needle compass through the woods..nothing could be farther from the truth.

Yes, in the days before electronic distance meters, they used steel tapes for distance. Their line of sight was done with a transit and their bearings were based off of solar observations. I have recovered stone monuments in the Takotna area surveyed in the 1910's that were less than 1 meter off of our calculated GPS coordinates. I have retraced lines in that area that matched within .5' of my electronic distance meter over a mile and they measured it with a steel "chain". Just like today, there were good surveyors and bad surveyors and quality varies. Yes, boundaries have been marked by staff compass and steel tape in a few areas, but these are extremely rare in Alaska.

State surveys like OTE's and remote staking programs should have the lat and long on corner one of the lot, or corner 1 of lot 1 on a group lots, show on the recorded plat. If not that data is available from DNR. It's simple calculations to find the lat and long of the other corners from this. You can either calculate it out longhand or simply use the functions in your GPS to plot a line from corner 1 to corner 2 using the bearing and distance shown on the plat.

Surveyors were not required to brush out the lines on these types of state surveys so don't spend much time looking for the lines. Get in the general area of the monument you are looking for and look for bearing tree tags. The bearing tree types are spelled out on the plats and will allow you to find the corners. The best best would be to go to Surveyors Exchange and rent a metal detector. It will help immensely in finding corners.

[almostfree]

What programs convert to GPS coordinates? I've got the platt for my area and I need to reroute a trail and want to keep it off of anyone's lot. Try as I might, I could not find their lot corners.

I'm not sure what you are trying to convert from, but if you need a program that will convert coordinates and lats/longs try CORPSCON.

http://crunch.tec.army.mil/software/.../corpscon.html

I agree about renting a magnetic locator. A good quadrant bearing compass might not hurt either.