6.3 Retracement Surveys, Original Evidence & the BLM Manual

The retracement mandate

Mississippi's Standards of Practice close with a directive: "Other regulations including the Manual of Instructions for the Survey of U.S. Public Lands and all subdivision Laws and regulations of the State of Mississippi Statutes shall be followed" (Rule 7.3, item 19). The Board's exam page lists the 1973 or 2009 Manual as study material, and both editions state the same central principle. A local surveyor retracing a public-land line is not making a new survey. The job is to find where the original deputy set the corners and ran the lines, and to restore them there. Federal law makes the original corners controlling (43 U.S.C. § 752; Cragin v. Powell, 128 U.S. 691 (1888); Section 5.2).

Mississippi's county surveyor statutes say the same thing in state terms. A county surveyor who resurveys and re-marks a tract is "governed by the original surveys, patents, or title deeds" (§ 19-27-13). In every resurvey the surveyor must perpetuate the original corners worked from by noting new bearing trees or other means (§ 19-27-15).

Reading the record

Start in the office:

1. Township plat. The approved plat shows section lines, quarter corners, meander lines, fractional lots with their areas, private claims, and the approval date.
2. Field notes. For each line, the notes give the course and length, and chainages to line trees, streams, ridges, roads, fields, and changes in timber. At each corner they describe the monument and the bearing trees: species, diameter, bearing, and distance in links.
3. Instructions in force. How the deputy was told to subdivide, monument, and mark depends on the era (Chapter 6). Interpret the record by those instructions.
4. Later records. County surveyor record books kept in the chancery clerk's office (§ 19-27-5), recorded plats, prior surveys, and the BLM's General Land Office Records site.

Units

Convert with feet = chains × 66 and feet = links × 0.66. Example: a sweet gum at 48 links is 31.68 ft away, and a water oak at 75 links is 49.50 ft away. Field notes often book distances like "40.00" (chains.links); remember the decimal is chains, not feet.

What original evidence looks like today

Posts. Most Mississippi corners were wooden posts. The post has usually decayed, but careful digging can reveal a post mold: a stain of decayed wood contrasting with undisturbed soil at the recorded position. Later manuals directed deputies to deposit marked stones, charcoal, or other durable material in the corner hole in some situations; check the instructions for the survey's date before relying on that.

Bearing trees. The deputy blazed each bearing tree on the side facing the corner and scribed it with the township, range, section, and "BT." As the tree grew, the blaze healed over. Today the evidence is often:

• a scar or bulge on a living tree, of the right species, diameter class, and position;
• a stump or stump hole in the right place; or
• when an old tree is carefully cut through the healed blaze, the original face with its scribing, and a reversed impression of it in the overgrowth.

Recovering one bearing tree whose species, bearing, and distance agree with the notes can fix the corner. Measure from the tree's face along the record bearing and distance, allowing for growth and for the deputy's compass (Section 5.2).

Line trees and blazes. Trees standing on the line were hacked with notches on the sides facing along the line. Trees near the line were blazed on the sides quartering toward it. Blazes and hacks let you follow an original line through timber even where the corners are gone. Topographic calls help too: a creek crossing, the foot of a bluff, or the edge of a prairie at a recorded chainage.

Weighing modern markers

Mississippi fields and woods are full of later markers: axles, pipes, rebar, fence corners, paint lines. None of them is original GLO evidence in itself. A found marker becomes good evidence of a PLSS corner position when its origin can be connected to the original:

• a county surveyor record or recorded plat stating that the surveyor found original evidence and set this marker there;
• agreement with recovered accessories or original line evidence; or
• long-standing recognition by the affected owners, with a credible origin.

Accepting an unexplained pin simply because it is near the computed position is sometimes called "pin worship." It can move a corner onto someone's error. Rejecting a well-documented perpetuation because it disagrees with a computed position is the opposite mistake. The standard is evidence: follow the chain of evidence back to the original survey.

Documenting the retracement

Rule 7.3 makes the evidence part of the plat. Show and describe every monument found or set, the sources of information used, and all discrepancies (Sections 4.2–4.3). For PLSS corners, good practice also records:

• the evidence found (post mold, bearing tree remains, line blazes) and the evidence searched for but not found;
• the corner's classification (existent, obliterated, or lost; Section 7.1) and the method used to restore it; and
• new accessories or witness corners set to perpetuate the corner, as § 19-27-15 expects in county resurveys.