California Surveyors Forums

Last week I had the pleasure of working on 3 different large ranches performing 3 completely separate surveys, totally unrelated. Beautiful places. One in particular is an incredible place teaming with elk, large bucks, wild boar and turkeys.

Anyways, what struck me as being of interest and prompted this bit of spew was that these 3 surveys and foothill ranches shared similar traits. All three were full of original GLO corners, much of which had been retraced by subsequent surveys of different vintages.

And all of these ranches had fences. Miles and miles of fences. Even some stone fences. Nary a one of them was on line. Most of them paralleled the lines. Some meandered a bit here and there. Typical offset was 20 feet or so, with a few places as close as 10' and some a bit way more off.
The stone fences had no semblance or relation to boundaries, other than where they were called out in the 1860/70's GLO field notes. Makes sense they didn't match any lines, being as they pre-dated the GLO.

As for the barbed wire/wood post fences. They generally passed by the actual corners but missed by the typical 20' plus or minus. Then they generally paralleled the true line, some straighter than others. None, absolutely none came anywhere close to representing the actual line.

Anyways, just food for thought. 3 different large tracts of land in 3 totally separate parts of the state, all sharing a common thread.

Like someone once said, sometimes a fence is just a fence.

It is not possible to make a rule regarding determining facts from evidence. A rule like "fences are never evidence of a boundary" can not exist in our system.

Generally what is sought is the best available evidence of the boundary location. If the original section corner is found then obviously that is better evidence of the section corner than the fence corner 20' away. Also your example of the stone fences being called in the original government notes (which sounds like the Sutter Buttes) is an example of evaluating evidence; it isn't too much of a stretch to conclude as you did, that makes common sense.

On the other hand suppose a four way fence corner exists in the probable vicinity of the section corner. There is four original monuments in each of the four directions. A double proportionate solution is 200' from the four way fence corner but your experience is that those were usually within 20' of the original monument. In that case the fence corner should be weighted more heavily than a double proportionate solution.

Thank you Mr. Karoly.

Dave Karoly, PLS wrote:It is not possible to make a rule regarding determining facts from evidence. A rule like "fences are never evidence of a boundary" can not exist in our system
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Absolutely agree. Never said otherwise.

Dave Karoly, PLS wrote:.......
On the other hand suppose a four way fence corner exists in the probable vicinity of the section corner. There is four original monuments in each of the four directions. A double proportionate solution is 200' from the four way fence corner but your experience is that those were usually within 20' of the original monument. In that case the fence corner should be weighted more heavily than a double proportionate solution.

Can't really agree with that as a general concept. For instance, if the found originals in all 4 directions from the lost section corner are all in good harmony with the record, a fence corner out of whack by 200' may be hard to swallow as being evidence of the original.

Your point reminds me of a survey I made a few years back where the fences were similar in that they were 20-30' off of the corners. Except for one spot where a 1/4 corner was missing. An E-W mid-section fence intersected a fence coming from the south about 200' south of where GLO record dimensions put it. Using your generalization, one might have been led to throw a dart at the fence corner where the E-W midsection fence intersected the N-S fence from the south. Except that the field notes contained a callout to an old stone fence at 3 chains north of the 1/4 position. I found the stone fence and my measurement to it matched GLO distance well. This led me to believe the fence intersection was indeed 200 feet south of the true corner. Even though the other termini of these same fences originated near corners.

While this story is one that stands out in my memory, it is one that is not unique to me.

I can't disagree with your analysis because it all depends on the available evidence. I'm not suggesting anyone throw a dart at a fence corner; most Surveyors including me view fence corners with skepticism but if there is nothing better (no call for a stone fence) then it may be best to accept reality in that case.

Really it comes down to a matter of opinion as to how the evidence in a particular case is used to develop the fact of the boundary location. I've seen corners that don't fit the pattern by 200', it is not uncommon in mountainous terrain. On the other hand the fence corner may be there instead of down in the canyon therefore it is not evidence of the section corner location. The possibilities are infinite. Double proportion is just a equitable method to distribute the errors equally among the property owners if there is no better evidence of the corner location (it has to be declared lost).