California Surveyors Forums

I'm surveying a property adjacent to the Matadero Canal in Palo Alto. The deed refers to a lot and block in an old map from 1910. No original monuments were found. I'm thinking of treating the canal as a street and determine the boundary of the block with help of splitting improvements. I have contacted the Santa Clara Valley Water District. I was told that no record map is available for the canal beside the old map. There is a R.O.S. done on the same street where the surveyor went beyond the canal and split the improvement of the next street! Shouldn’t the excess or deficiency within a block apportioned among the lots of the block? (Brown)
I intend to find the centerline of the canal by splitting the improvements, give it the full width and find the boundary of my block, and then prorate the excess or deficiency.
I would like to know what your idea is regarding the canal and how to treat it.
Thanks
The attached file is a portion of the map, the P.I.Q. is lots 7 and 8 in block 5. The R.O.S. map is in block 4.

I surveyed near this area, and also ran into difficulties at the area of the canal. I am not sure if you can split the concreted canal as if they are curbs on a street. I also would be reluctant to split the other street, as you mentioned you were also. In my case, I held record from the nearest older monuments of record from one side, since I did not feel I could use the creek improvements.

btaylor wrote:I surveyed near this area, and also ran into difficulties at the area of the canal. I am not sure if you can split the concreted canal as if they are curbs on a street. I also would be reluctant to split the other street, as you mentioned you were also. In my case, I held record from the nearest older monuments of record from one side, since I did not feel I could use the creek improvements.

There are no record monuments. Do you mean monuments set by the other surveyor?
What's wrong with splitting canal's improvements. There is ret. wall on each side of the canal.

I could not get a good answer from Santa Clara Valley Water District (at least several years back when I was surveying that area) that they improved the canal in such a way (from a survey which defined the 30' wide strip) that I could split those walls. I was a few blocks further north from this site off Waverley. At my site, the canal improvements were very new - i.e. were not built at the time of the old subdivision. I wonder if the canal was even concreted back during the time of the subdivision.

As for monuments of record, I was referrring the area I surveyed, not the area you are surveying. It would be interesting to see what you find when shooting those canal walls. Does James Kiehl have an opinion?

Correction: It may have been a private outfit I spoke with at the time who was involved with the recent canal work, not SCVWD, but I cannot recall off-hand.

Absent any reliable monuments, I'd want to look not only at the street and canal improvement splits, but also the improvements along the intervening lot lines (fences, walls, etc.) to see how everything fits together before making a decision.

I finally did the splitting of the improvements on the canal, and the surrounding streets. The canal came out parallel with the street on the easterly side of the block. The street centerlines of the northerly and southerly side of the block were not parallel, but that's not the problem.
The problem is that on the W-E direction I have an excess of 1.00 ft.
On the N-S direction I'm OK with record dimensions within 0.1 ft.
Now I have to see any improvement plans of SCWWD regarding the canal.

Sako, interesting. That would confirm then, what I found when going off the monuments of record from the east. Everything old of record on my block (north of Waverley) fit well from the east, and when I got to the lot adjoining the creek, there was a non-tagged pipe, not too old, but it was off about 1 foot, and matched the fence line of the adjoiner. I could not figure out why. Possibly it was the result of splitting the creek improvements; possibly it was simply set badly.

As I stated previously, the creek walls and abutments/overpasses were improved just a year or so prior to my survey, so I did not trust their locations at all. I recall I had located the easterly wall, and emailed the surveyor involved about it, asking if my location in relation the boundary I resolved fit with his resolution, but he was not comfortable giving me an answer as to the boundary of the canal in relation to the wall. I would be interested if you get some hard answer on that.

I am sure you do not want to go out and do more measuring, but at this point it may be wise to split the improvements on the west street, and see if there is a 1 foot shortage.