Almost every difficult PLSS problem reduces to a single question: is this corner obliterated or lost? The two words sound like synonyms in ordinary speech and mean opposite things in surveying. An obliterated corner is found; a lost corner is computed. Getting the classification wrong does not merely change the method, it changes the answer, and it changes it by whatever distance the original survey happened to depart from its record.
The classification is also not a matter of judgement about how much effort is reasonable. A corner is lost only when its position cannot be determined from any evidence whatever. Until then it is obliterated, and the correct response is to keep looking.
The two definitions
- Obliterated corner
- A corner at which no visible evidence of the original monument remains, but whose position can still be determined beyond reasonable doubt from other evidence: accessories, traces, collateral records, or the testimony of persons who knew the original location.
- Lost corner
- A corner whose position cannot be determined beyond reasonable doubt from any surviving trace, accessory, record or testimony, and which can therefore be restored only by reference to one or more interdependent corners, using proportionate measurement.
Read those two definitions against each other and the distinction is clear. Both describe a corner with no monument standing. The difference is entirely about whether the position can still be established from evidence. Missing monument is a fact about the object; lost is a conclusion about the evidence, and it is a conclusion that must be earned.
Why the distinction decides the outcome
| Question | Obliterated corner | Lost corner |
|---|---|---|
| Is the original monument present? | No | No |
| Can the position be determined from evidence? | Yes, beyond reasonable doubt | No |
| What re-establishes it? | The evidence itself: accessories, traces, records, testimony | Proportionate measurement from the nearest existing corners |
| Does record measurement control? | No. The evidence controls even if it contradicts the record | Yes, in proportion to the record distances |
| What must be done first? | Diligent search of every category of evidence | Every means of recovery must be exhausted before the classification is made |
| How likely is the result to be exactly right? | As reliable as the evidence found | Only as good as the assumption that the original survey distributed its error uniformly |
The last row is the heart of it. Proportionate measurement assumes the original survey's error was spread evenly along the line between the controlling corners. That assumption is a fallback, adopted because it is impartial and reproducible, not because it is likely to be true. Original surveys made their errors in gullies, in brush, in bad weather and at the end of long days, none of which is uniform. Proportioning is the least bad option when evidence has run out, and it is a poor substitute for evidence that still exists.
Evidence that makes a corner obliterated rather than lost
Almost anything that ties a position to the original survey can save a corner from being declared lost. The categories worth working through systematically are these.
- Accessories recorded in the field notes: bearing trees with scribing still legible under the overgrowth, bearing objects, mounds, pits at their recorded bearings.
- Memorials deposited at the corner, especially charcoal, which persists in the soil indefinitely and can be recovered by careful excavation.
- Physical remains of the monument: fragments of a post, a stain in the soil profile, a marked stone displaced into a nearby fence line or rock pile.
- Line trees blazed by the original survey party, and blazed lines through timber, which fix the direction of the original line even where the corner is gone.
- Fences, roads, ditches, hedgerows and cultivation boundaries established to the corner and undisturbed for a long period.
- Records of previous surveyors who found the monument, including corner records, plats of survey, county filings and private field books.
- Testimony of persons with direct knowledge of the monument's location, and of long-time occupants who can point to where the stone or post stood.
The burden before declaring a corner lost
Because declaring a corner lost transfers the decision from evidence to arithmetic, the burden of exhausting recovery is real. In practice that means a documented search covering the record, the ground and the people, in that order, and it usually means returning to a site more than once, at different seasons, with the notes in hand.
- Assemble the original field notes and plat, all later resurveys, all filed corner records, and the records of any surveyor who has worked in the section.
- Compute a search position from the best available recovered corners, and define a realistic search area around it rather than a point.
- Search for accessories at their recorded bearings and distances, including excavating for stumps and roots where a bearing tree is recorded.
- Excavate at the computed corner position and at any suspicious surface feature, looking for charcoal, post remains, pits and soil disturbance.
- Examine every fence, wall, rock pile, road and cultivation line near the position for a displaced original stone or an alignment that reveals the original line.
- Interview owners and neighbours, and record what they say and who said it.
- Only then classify the corner as lost, state in the report exactly what was searched and what was not found, and proceed to proportionate measurement.
Choosing the restoration method once a corner is lost
If the corner really is lost, the method depends on what kind of corner it is and how many directions of control exist. A lost quarter-section corner, or any corner whose position is controlled along a single line, is restored by single proportionate measurement between the nearest existing corners on that line. A lost interior section corner, whose position is controlled in two directions at once, is restored by double proportionate measurement from the nearest existing corners north, south, east and west.
Special cases modify this. A lost closing corner is restored on the governing line by single proportion along that line, because its position was determined by the intersection and not by the record distance from the corners beside it. A corner whose record contains a definite call to a topographic feature may be restored by that call. And a corner on a standard parallel or other controlling line is restored along that line, never across it.