Restoring a Lost Quarter Corner with a 1978 Pipe in the Way
You are retracing Section 22, T.4S., R.2E. The south line measures 80.32 chains between two original 1873 stone corners with legible scribing and recognizable bearing-tree stumps. The 1873 GLO notes give 40.05 chains from the southwest corner to the 1/4 corner and 40.00 chains on to the southeast corner. No trace of the original 1/4 corner survives. A 1978 survey set a 3/4-inch pipe with a washer 12 feet southeast of the position your retracement produces, apparently at an old fence intersection; three subsequent deeds in the neighborhood call to that 1978 pipe by record. The client's fence, tax lines and the neighbor's irrigation main all follow the pipe.
1. Which corners control, where do you set the restored 1/4 corner, and how do you treat the 1978 pipe? Show your reasoning numerically.
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Controlling corners: the two original 1873 stones are original monuments, the highest grade of boundary evidence. The 1/4 corner is lost (not merely unfound - no pipe, pit, or remnant found), so it is restored by single proportionate measure along the line between the two accepted corners on that same line.
Computation (record): 40.05 ch + 40.00 ch = 80.05 ch. Proportion to the southwest corner: 40.05 / 80.05 = 0.500312.
Measured: 80.32 ch. Restored position from the southwest stone: 0.500312 × 80.32 = 40.19 ch = 2,652.2 ft. Residual to the southeast stone: 80.32 − 40.19 = 40.13 ch = 2,648.9 ft. (Sum checks: 2,652.2 + 2,648.9 = 5,301.1 ft = 80.32 ch.)
The 1978 pipe: a monument is controlling only if it is original or is shown to perpetuate the original. A 1978 pipe set at a fence intersection with no documentary or physical basis is a later, independent monument of unknown derivation - it is not an accepted corner and does not displace proportionate restoration. Record it as found, describe it, and note the 12-ft (0.18 ch) discrepancy and the fact that deeds call to it.
Before concluding: excavate and search for evidence the 1978 surveyor may have relied on (decayed wood, glass, bearing-tree pits) within a reasonable distance; if such evidence exists, the pipe may be an acceptable perpetuation and the analysis changes.
2. What is the effect of the three deeds that call to the 1978 pipe? Can the pipe become the controlling corner by reference in later deeds?
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A call in a deed is evidence of intent, not a re-survey. Senior deeds to the section corners and the GLO plat describe the land; later deeds that call to a monument described as "the 1/4 corner" mean the true 1/4 corner, not whatever object happens to sit there. If the pipe was set at a wrong location, deeds calling to it convey the land they describe, subject to the true line.
When the pipe can matter:
- If it is shown to perpetuate the original corner (see the excavation question).
- If the adjoining owners have since located the line to the pipe by agreement, acquiescence, or adverse possession over the statutory period - a title issue, not a surveying one.
- As evidence of a boundary line of long standing, weighed with the other evidence.
Your obligations on the map:
- Show both the restored proportionate corner and the found 1978 pipe, with the 12-ft offset dimensioned.
- Note that deeds of record call to the 1978 pipe and that the pipe is not accepted as the original corner.
- Do not silently adopt the pipe, and do not silently ignore it - either choice misleads someone who later relies on the map.
3. Suppose the southeast stone had also been lost, with only the southwest stone and the section corners to the north found. How would your approach change?
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Proportioning requires accepted corners on the same line. With only one corner on the line identified, you cannot single-proportion that line: a single proportion requires two fixed ends.
Procedure instead:
- Exhaust the search and the record first - a lost corner is a last resort.
- Recover control from accepted corners elsewhere: run the record bearing and distance from the southwest stone, and hold the resulting position only to the degree the record supports it. Cross-check against the line established between accepted corners on the north side of the section, using the record distances between the south and north lines.
- Do not "double-proportion" a 1/4 corner using lines that are not on the same line, and do not average the record distance with fence locations or tax-map dimensions.
- Set the restored corner with a clear note in the record of survey: the basis used, the record bearing and distance, the measured check, and the fact that the corner is re-established rather than perpetuated.
- Where the evidence cannot support a confident position, report the uncertainty and the alternative positions rather than presenting a false precision.