The South Fork Leaves Its Bed
The Reyes parcel is Lot 3 on the 1871 GLO plat, bordering the South Fork. The plat meanders the river 9.00 chains north of the lot's south line and returns 14.20 acres; the field notes record the river 40 feet wide at that point. By 1988 the south bank had moved gradually 35 feet north. In June 1993 a single flood cut a new channel 120 feet north of the old bank, leaving the former channel as a dry slough. Under this state's law, the 1871 patent of a fractional lot bordering a non-navigable stream carried title to the thread of the stream. Reyes bought in 2019 by a deed describing the north line as 'the meander line as shown on the 1871 GLO plat.' A downstream owner's 1962 record of survey also treats the meander line as the lot line, and he now disputes Reyes' claim out to the new channel.
1. Where is Reyes' north boundary today? Describe it by reference to the events on the ground.
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The boundary is the thread of the South Fork as it stood immediately before the June 1993 avulsion - the 1871 thread (20 ft north of the 1871 bank, the river being 40 ft wide) carried northward by the gradual accretion of 35 ft, then frozen in place when the flood cut the new channel.
- Accretion (1871-1993): gradual, imperceptible movement adds to the riparian owner; the thread moves with it. Reyes gets the 35 ft and the bed to the new thread position.
- Avulsion (June 1993): a sudden, perceptible change of channel in a single event does not move the boundary. The strip between the old thread and the new channel does not become Reyes' land, and Reyes has no claim to the new channel.
- The slough remains the boundary feature at its pre-flood location; the vacated bed stays with the owners on each side of the former thread.
Reyes' claim to the new channel fails by the avulsion rule, not by any defect in his deed.
2. What effect do the 1871 meander line, the 1962 record of survey, and the 2019 deed's call to 'the meander line' have?
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Meander line (1871): not a boundary. Meandering exists to compute area of fractional lots; the patent passed title to the water as the law of the state defines it. The 9.00-chain line describes where the water was, not where the title stopped.
1962 record of survey: repeats an error and creates nothing. A later surveyor's map, however carefully drafted, cannot move a boundary that the patent fixed; at most it is evidence of what the 1962 surveyor believed.
2019 deed call: where the grantor owned to the thread, a call to the meander line is generally construed as bounding on the stream - the meander line stands as a call for the water. But if the deed affirmatively limits the grant to the line itself, it may have severed the riparian interest, and the grantor could not convey what he had already cut off. That is a title question for counsel: the surveyor should show both the meander line and the water boundary, label each, and note the ambiguity rather than resolving it.
3. What if the South Fork had been navigable at statehood? And what must your map and file contain either way?
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If the river was navigable at statehood, the state took the bed in trust, the patent stopped at the ordinary high water mark of the pre-avulsion channel, and Reyes would lose the 20 ft of bed and the accreted bank would still follow the water. That single fact - navigability at statehood - changes the answer more than any measurement, so it must be researched, not assumed.
Documentation needed in the file and on the map: the 1871 plat and field notes; the historical aerials establishing a gradual bank movement to 1988 and a single-event channel change in 1993; the pre-avulsion bank located from imagery; the pre-avulsion thread; the 1993 channel and the slough as they exist today; the 1962 record of survey as a found document. The map should distinguish the water boundary (a moving line the surveyor locates as of a stated date) from fixed record lines, and should state the date and source of the bank position depicted.