9.3 Diligent Monument Search and Re-establishment
Key Takeaways
- Activity III.11 is perform a diligent monument search; Domain II knowledge lists a search package of search points, magnetic versus non-ferrous methods, and historic depth.
- BPC 8771 requires locating and referencing controlling monuments before street or right-of-way work, resetting or witnessing them if they could be obliterated, and filing a corner record or record of survey; the surveyor elects which document.
- The governmental agency performing or permitting construction or maintenance work must ensure monument perpetuation under 8771(d).
- BPC 8773.3 requires reconstructing or rehabilitating the monument and accessories whenever a corner record is filed under 8773 so the corner remains as permanent as reasonably possible.
- A corner is not lost merely because the first search point is empty; proportioned restoration waits until the search described in this section is actually done.
Activity III.11 on the January 2025 test plan is Perform diligent monument search (examples: monument preservation, boundary survey, legal requirements). Knowledge items E through H cover monument recovery, re-establishment procedures (explicitly PLS Act 8771 and 8773), correct identification, and pedigree. Independent OpenExamPrep teaching in this section is how a California crew actually searches, what 8771 requires when construction will disturb monuments, and what 8773 family sections require when a PLSS or other corner is restored or rehabilitated. Identification and pedigree from section 9.1 still apply. Lost-corner classification from section 9.2 still applies. This section is the search and the statutory reset, not the legal essay on unwritten rights.
The search package: points, metal, and depth
Domain II knowledge M names the recovery procedure in four phrases: field package preparation, search points, magnetic vs. non-ferrous, and historic depth. A diligent search is planned in the office and executed in the dirt.
Search points are computed from record bearings and distances, prior ties, intersection of found lines, and—when identification has not yet succeeded—a trial proportionate position used only to hunt evidence. Occupy the point, then search a reasoned area around it. Original surveys were chained. Later maps were drafted. Pavement moved. The monument is often not in the first 0.10-foot circle of a modern GNSS coordinate.
Magnetic versus non-ferrous is a method choice, not a personality preference. Magnetic locators and iron-response tools find pipes, nails, and some caps. They do not find an unmarked stone, a wood post stain, a scribed bearing tree, a concrete monument without ferrous core, a ceramic marker, or a charcoal pit from a long-gone accessory. If the notes call for a stone or a post, bring probes, shovels, and eyes, not only a locator. If the notes call for an iron, still look for the stone the iron replaced. Pedigree often lives in the older, quieter object.
Historic depth means the monument may sit in a buried horizon: extra lifts of pavement, sidewalk reconstruction, flood or slide fill, fire debris, agricultural working, or a landscaped berm. Search to the depth the history of the site and the notes make reasonable. This independent chapter does not invent a BLM-required burial depth or a California statutory inch count. Depth comes from the record and the site, not from a round number in a study guide.
| Package element | Field meaning | Failure mode on the exam and in the street |
|---|---|---|
| Search points | Occupy record, tie, and trial-proportion coordinates, then expand | Treating the first GNSS coordinate as the only place a monument can exist |
| Magnetic methods | Pipes, nails, and other ferrous objects | Declaring a stone corner lost because the locator was quiet |
| Non-ferrous methods | Stones, wood, scribes, concrete without iron, accessories | Walking away from GLO notes that never promised a pipe |
| Historic depth | Buried horizons from paving, fill, fire, flood, cultivation | Surface-only search on a reconstructed road |
Diligence is documented. Notes should show where you searched, with what tool, how deep, and what you did not find. Negative evidence is still evidence. A crew that writes "searched, nothing found" with no radius, no depth, and no method has not proved a lost corner.
When testimony will identify an old, lost, or obliterated corner, BPC 8760 authorizes oaths; keep them in the field notes. Testimony supplements a search; it does not excuse skipping the ground.
BPC 8771: preservation, reference, and reset
Section 8771 is the California construction-and-control monument statute the test plan cites for re-establishment. Paraphrased from the current Legislative Counsel text (amended by Stats. 2014, Ch. 400, SB 1467, effective January 1, 2015):
- 8771(a). Monuments set shall be sufficient in number and durability, and efficiently placed so as not to be readily disturbed, to ensure, together with monuments already existing, the perpetuation or facile reestablishment of any point or line of the survey.
- 8771(b). When monuments exist that control subdivisions, tracts, boundaries, roads, streets, or highways, or provide horizontal or vertical survey control, they shall be located and referenced by or under a licensed land surveyor or licensed civil engineer legally authorized to practice land surveying before streets, highways, other rights-of-way, or easements are improved, constructed, reconstructed, maintained, resurfaced, or relocated, and a corner record or record of survey of the references shall be filed with the county surveyor.
- 8771(c). If any monument could be destroyed, damaged, covered, disturbed, or otherwise obliterated, a permanent monument shall be reset in the surface of the new construction or a witness monument or monuments set to perpetuate the location, and a corner record or record of survey shall be filed with the county surveyor prior to the recording of a certificate of completion for the project. Sufficient controlling monuments shall be retained or replaced in their original positions so later surveys need not originate on monuments that do not currently control the area.
- 8771(d). The governmental agency performing or permitting construction or maintenance work is responsible for ensuring that either that agency or the landowner performing the work provides for the perpetuation this section requires.
- 8771(e). Licensees shall assist the governmental agency with maps, field notes, and pertinent records. Monuments that only mark highway, road, street, right-of-way, or easement limiting lines are not adequate for this purpose unless specifically noted on the corner record or record of survey of the improvement works with direct ties in bearing or azimuth and distance to other monuments of record.
- 8771(f). The decision to file a corner record or a record of survey under (b) or (c) is at the election of the licensed land surveyor or legally authorized civil engineer submitting the document.
Field sequence under 8771 is therefore two maps (or two stages of the same duty), not one: reference before the grinder or the excavator, reset or witness after, file both times as required, and keep original-position control. A post-paving punch of a new spike with no pre-construction ties is not 8771 compliance. A contractor pulling street monuments into a bucket is not a search method.
BPC 8773 family: PLSS corners, rehabilitation, exemptions
Section 9.2 taught the 8773(a)–(b) split: corner record for PLSS corners other than lost corners that are found, set, reset, or used as control; record of survey after establishing a lost corner (8764). Additional sections complete the field duty.
8773.1. The Board prescribes corner-record information, form, and filing time limits. A corner record shall be a single 8.5 by 11 inch sheet, which may consist of a front and back page.
8773.3 (amended by Stats. 2024, Ch. 588, AB 3253, effective January 1, 2025): in every case where a corner record is filed pursuant to 8773, the licensed land surveyor or registered civil engineer shall reconstruct or rehabilitate the monument of such corner, and accessories, so that it remains as permanent a monument as is reasonably possible and so that it may reasonably be expected to be located with facility at all times in the future. Filing a form while leaving a kicking-loose pipe in a hole does not satisfy 8773.3.
8773.4(a). A corner record shall be signed and sealed (federal or State of California surveys may be signed by the chief of the survey party with official title).
8773.4(b) — a corner record need not be filed when:
- A corner record is on file and the corner is found as described in the existing corner record.
- All conditions of 8773 are complied with by proper notations on a record of survey, or on a parcel or subdivision map under the Subdivision Map Act.
- The survey is of a mobilehome-park interior lot as defined in Health and Safety Code section 18210, with the statute's map-and-conversion limits.
8773.4(c) says the section does not apply to maps filed prior to January 1, 1974.
8772 still governs tags on monuments you set. Rehabilitation often means a durable monument plus a tag that can be traced. Do not destroy a still-identifiable original in order to plant a prettier pipe unless the original cannot be made reasonably permanent; 8773.3 is rehabilitation, not a license to erase pedigree.
Re-establishment versus a new corner
Re-establishment puts a monument back at an identified position (existent or obliterated) or at a properly restored lost position. It is not a convenient offset that "should have been" the GLO location. After a lost-corner restoration, remember 8773(b): the map is a record of survey. After a found PLSS corner that you reset and use as control, remember 8773(a) and 8773.3: corner record (unless 8773.4 excuses the filing) and physical rehabilitation.
On the exam, a paving project with no pre-construction references violates 8771(b) even if someone promises to "put something back." A quiet locator at the first search point is not 8773 lost-corner establishment. A corner record filed for a lost corner you just proportioned is the wrong document. Independent OpenExamPrep practice for III.11 is: search with the full package, classify the corner honestly, then file and monument the statute that actually applies.
A diligent monument search package for California field work should include which of the following?
Before streets or other rights-of-way are improved, reconstructed, or resurfaced, Business and Professions Code section 8771(b) requires which action?
When a corner record is filed pursuant to Business and Professions Code section 8773, section 8773.3 requires the surveyor or registered civil engineer to do which of the following?