recently spent nearly a week in eastern and northern Maine around the first of August doing some serious survey marker hunting. My searches were centered around 1) the Eastern Oblique Arc and 2) the US-Canada boundary with a few triangulation stations thrown in. It involves stations up in Aroostook and Washington counties which are a looooong way away and where things are faaaaar apart. I drove over 1200 miles in 5 travel days!
My interest in the Eastern Oblique Arc (EOA for short) is familiar to many in this group. This is the 6th forum thread on the subject. Check these links for the past threads.
October 2007
April 2008
July 2008
August 2008
November 2008
I got intrested in the EOA in the summer of 2007, as I was planning a trip to Maine and New Brunswick as a vacation with my wife. Prompted by some discussions on this forum, I had recently read Holograph's excellent Wiki on the Eastern Oblique Arc. This described the monumental project done by the Coast Survey from about 1830 to about 1900 which surveyed the entire East Coast to an unprecedented level of accuracy. And in so doing, helped establish the "Figure of the Earth" (the exact shape of the earth's spheroid in North America) which laid the foundations of modern datums. Pretty great stuff, of which I was totally ignorant until then. So my 2007 trip was devoted to finding as many stations as possible that still exist in the area.
Here's Holograph's Wiki: .
This years trip was built on two basic ideas: finish the missing stations in the easternmost segment of the EOA, and check out the connections made in the 19th century between the primary triangulation scheme (the EOA) and the US-Canadian boundary, which after nearly 50 years of wrangling, was finally agreed upon in 1842 and laid out in the several years following.
As for the EOA, check out this map:
Rye 1867, in the upper left of the triangulation scheme was the last one in Maine that was known still to exist, and one for which I had a DNF in 2007. I'm happy to say that push pin was turned green in this trip and I have a note below in this thread on that happy find.
Besides the gray push pins on Howard (under a concrete radar pad) and Grand Manan Island (a very long swim) I was finished with this section. But what about the three red ones: St. David, Calais Observatory and Prince Regent Redoubt? Well, St. David was lost when the owner of the land "removed the station-mark and built a house over it" in 1887 (quote from 1888 CGS Annual Report), and Prince Regent Redoubt was lost in 1910. Not much to go on there.
But Calais Observatory was another story. The logs on the datasheet say it was lost prior to 1935, and a 1998 log said the stone the transit was mounted on was found at the foot of the hill, so I figured that was that. But when I visited the site in 2007 anyway, I was intrigued by a new NGS disk that had been placed there a few years prior, and that story went on as I learned more about the history of the site and this culminated on August 4th. See the note below on this highly unusual story.
As for the connection with the boundary, I found these two excerpts from the CGS annual reports:
From the 1867 report: And from the 1890 report:
The work done in 1889 was north of the line Spruce Mt - Mount Henry shown on the following diagram. It's not clear which were the 10 stations established as documented in 1890, but they must have included Peekaboo Mt, Spring Hill (obscured on the diagram) and Pole Hill on the US side, Green Mt., McInelly, and Kennedy on the Canadian side and Initial and Transit on the line. The other two may have been in the area of the lakes in the center of the area, possibly Walls Hill and Pemberton Ridge.
Of interest is that the same "Mr. Boyd" was working on the same project 23 years after the first report. Didn't that guy have a life?
And here is the triangulation diagram from S.P. 46 "Triangulation in Maine" (1918) showing the 1867-1889 work along the upper St. Croix connecting the initial monument to the CGS survey near Calais.
A little history of these marks is in order
Finally there was a triangulation station unrelated to these topics, but which was a nice finds nevertheless, plus a few more reference monuments in the Calais Area which were set by the boundary commission when the route of the boundary through the St. Croix River was fixed in the early part of the 20th century.
Read on ...
here is a monument up in Amity Maine, in Aroostook County, called the Initial Monument. It was the first point on the entire boundary between the US and Canada to be fixed, in 1798. At that time, the details of the rest of the border were still in dispute. A cedar post was set. This was replaced in 1817 by another cedar post when the North Line was laid out as an "Exploratory" line, but not yet accepted at the official boundary. The North Line and most of the rest of the border was finally defined by the treaty of 1842, and the Initial Monument got an Iron post, right next to the 1817 cedar post. This is shown in the vintage 1908 photo below. The iron post remains, and I'm told the 1817 cedar post was shipped to the Maine State Museum in Augusta after the iron post was reset with a concrete base (soon after the second picture below was taken). It is apparently in storage in the annex, not on display.
Left: Vintage 1908 photo showing the 1843 iron post (which is still there) and the 1817 cedar post.
Right: Vintage photo (1908) taken after the monument was reset in its concrete base. The base is very high above the ground, perhaps to keep the
monument at the same height. The 1817 cedar post appears to have been pulled from the ground and is leaning against the base.
Although I unquestionably "found" the monument (from about .4 miles away), I could not approach close to it due to flooding along the vista. I hope to go back when the ground freezes and get a close up look. Stay tuned to this page.
And my log on GC:
his station is on a low hill that runs north-south about .1 mile just west (on the US side) of the border. Pole Hill is a First Order station and was used at the most northeasterly point of the early surveys of the state of Maine, and effectively it tied the boundary monuments into the survey of the state and the entire east coast.
To get to the station I went north along the boundary swath past Monument 1A, and nearly to 1B. Then I headed straight up the hill, through relatively open woods to an old track road which ran along the ridge line. My GPS said I had hit the ridge about 200 feet north of the station, so I simply walked along the old road and Voila! there was the 6' x 3' bolder at the side of the road, and there was the old IBC disk on the boulder surrounded by a chiseled triangle. It was an easy find (aside from getting there) and the station was in good shape. Originally the station was a simple drill hole, but the disk was set in the drill hole in 1916 by the IBC.
first tried to find this in 2007. Quoting from my log:
This year's searched went much better.
My route to the summit was far superior to the one I took in 2007. This time I used aerial views from Google Maps and found some logging roads which led to within .1 miles of the summit. They were not drivable in my rental car, but they were easily walkable. The final bushwhack to the top was also easy. Somehow the brambles I had passed through in 2007 where off to the side.
My strategy was first to search for the witness sign that was supposedly placed here in 1963, but that was nowhere to be found. Then I looked for piles of rocks, but as mentioned in my previous log, they were everywhere, and none particularly stood out. My GPS got me to about a 20 foot circle, so I started methodically checking rock piles (for the purpose of this search, any two rocks close together made a "rock pile") and scanning. This time however I had my metal detector, which although no silver bullet, can help.
What I did seem to have that I lacked in 2007, was luck. If you look at the 2007 photo, you'll see an area in front of a spruce tree with a few rocks, and this is where I started my search this time. Guess what? PAYDIRT! I moved a few rocks out of the way, scanned with the metal detector over the ground and heard the beeping I wanted to hear. I switched to pin-point mode and found a hot spot. So I dug through about 2 inches of dirt, roots, spruce needles and assorted vegetation, and BINGO, there was my copper bolt in a little hollow in the ledge.
There were supposed to be 4 holes around the mark, 3 at 18" distant to the north, south and west, and one 6" distant to the east. So I scraped the duff off the ledge to the east and BINGO, there was a drill hole about 6" from the copper bolt. This hole was the clincher, although I would not expect random copper bolts on this out of the way peak..
I never did find the other 3 holes. The ledge tended to disappear after about 18 inches out, and I could not assume either the original distances or directions were highly accurate. It would have been quite an excavation to clear the ledge out to say 24" all around the copper bolt with my little garden trowel, so I let those 3 holes go. Maybe the next person to visit the site will dig a little further out and find them.
I built a small cairn over the station on the ledge. Hopefully this will do better than the 1963 rock pile. Here it is:
Here's the GC log: . You'll see
both of my logs there.
n Tuesday, between the seminar and the dedication ceremony, A had a couple of hours of free time, so I drove around to the soutwest part of town. This station is on land belonging to the Moosehorn National Wildlife refuge and a visit to their site across the bridge is recommended. I spotted 2 bald eagles on a nest in the marsh near the refuge road. You can also spot it on the above triangulation map below Calais Observatory and just above the Rye - Chamchook line.
This station is reached via a pleasant walk along Ice House Road to Dan's Road, a lovely grassy road which brings you to the top. The summit still has the old stone wall which is the "fence" mentioned in the original description. The station and both reference marks were found in good condition.
A word about RM1: it is an old flat type USC&GS triangulation disk. It was set in 1909, when the station was visited 22 years after originally being set up and this was only a year or two after these disks were introduced. You would expect that a reference mark disk should have been used, but perhaps the survey party only had this triangulation station type of disk on hand. NGS Surveyor (George) who is on this forum, suggested that Reference Mark disks were not yet in use in 1909 - they first appeared around 1913. The discription merely calls the disk "a standard disk marker", so perhaps this type was the only type of disk available.
It has led to confusion in the past, since these are almost always used for the station mark, not a reference mark. So if you see this disk, keep searching for the iron bolt (which you probably walked over to get to the disk). The bolt in the triangle is the station, not the disk.
I have included an excerpt from the 1918 report on the survey in Maine, which explains the various dates and what happened when. It also states that the station was a drill hole and does not mention the iron bolt, which was evidently added later.
Here's the escerpt ftrpm the 1918 Special Pubblication No. 46, "Triangulation in Maine". You'll notice the text is sbstantially similar to the entry on the data sheet (I'm sure those who put the data sheet together got the text from this publication), but with a few telling differences:
One further point to note is that Maguerrewok is a first order station established in 1887. It almost certainly was one of the stations extablished when they connected the survey up along the St. Croix River to the primary scheme (the EOA) mentioned in the 1890 Annual report excerpted in the note above on the Calais Observatory.
Left: the bolt within the triangle on the boulder
Right: the old CGS disk used a s a reference mark
his story is about the newly dedicated Meridian park, in Calais. It goes back some 9 years. Or actually you could say it goes back 152 years to when the Calais Observatory was established by the Coast Survey in 1857.
My own awareness is much more recent. I became aware of Calais Observatory simply as a station in the Eastern Oblique Arc, and in fact, a station whose station mark was destroyed in the 1930s. I visited it anyway in 2007, but didn't understand what I was looking at. There was, however a new disk there set by the NGS in 2005, marking the site as #1 on the NGS Heritage Trail. See . The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Geodetic Survey (NGS), is the successor agency of the Coast Survey set up by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807.
I learned from that web page that Calais was the last link in establishing accurate longitude in North America via telegraph. Measurements were made in discreet pieces, , first from Harvard College Observatory to Thomas Hill Observatory in Bangor, Maine in 1851, from Thomas Hill Observatory to Calais Observatory in 1857, and in 1866, with the success of the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, observations were made from Greenwich Observatory (0-degrees longitude or the Prime Meridian), to Foilhommerum, Valentia Island, Ireland; from Ireland to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, and in the closing days of 1866 the final ‘connection’ was made between Newfoundland and Calais Maine, essentially making the Calais Observatory the ‘golden spike’ of longitude where mathematical longitude determinations between the old and new world met.
An Astronomical Transit (in the Smithsonian) thought to be like to one used at Calais. Note the crank which fits in the groove of the transit stone.
1895 saw the last NGS activity at Calais for 110 years (the Coast Survey performed direct observations between Calais and Harvard Observatories) and for many years only the stone supports for the various instruments remained; the building which housed and protected the instruments, hastily built in 1857, was long gone. Then sometime in the early 1930s, about 75 years after the observatory had been built, it is thought that some mischievous kids from the nearby Calais Academy, managed to topple the heavy granite Transit Stone over and send it rolling down the hill. Its significance had long been lost to anyone in the area. But the stone had held the transit used to measure longitude, and with the stone gone, the station was lost, and it was so reported in a 1935 log on the station's data sheet.
The 1998 photo on the righrt shows the site as it appeared from the early 1930s till 2005. Photo by Harold Nelson.
Another 65 years or so passed when the Maine Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT) was surveying for a project along Main Street in Calais. Harold Nelson, who was Project Coordinator for the survey began researching the geodetic control stations in order to tie the survey into State Plane Coordinates. He found one station of curious interest, .
Harold inquired from colleagues at the NGS, exactly what was that, and was told it was a longitude station and that it played an important historic role in establishing accurate longitude in North America. Harold then spent many hours in the University of Maine’s Fogler Library and went back to visit the Calais site in 1998 and discovered a stone at the bottom of the hill that looked like it might be the Transit Stone. He also noticed an interesting spot at the top that had been carved and leveled in the exposed bedrock, next to the mysterious stone pillar that remained at the top.
This 1998 photo showing a granite block at the base of the hill, which was suspected to be the missing transit stone. Photo: Harold Nelson.
Things moved along till 2005 when the NGS set the heritage disk and the Calais Historical Society was marshalling local support and volunteer efforts to clean up and rehabilitate the site as a park. At this time, the NGS crew recorded almost 2 hours of GPS readings on the "pad" next to the stone pillar, while the heritage disk was being set nearby, and the local highway department was enlisted to move the stone back up the hill and see if it fit into the pad. Gayle Moholland, who was working with the city crew, said "There was no question as to where to set it. It fits snug as a bug within the cut out area of the stone". Harold had by now done research on similar stations, some of which still survive: the Transit Stone held the Astronomical Transit used in longitude determinations, and the pillar held the astronomical clock that was used to transmit a steady series on "ticks" over the telegraph to the station at the other end of the line.
Left: 2005 photo showing the GPS set over the pad, while work is going on behind on the heritage disk. Photo: Harold Nelson
Right: 2005 photo showing the local highway department moving the stone into place. Photo: Gayle Moholland
Sometime later, the results of the GPS measurement came back. The software used by the NGS, called OPUS, sent back this cryptic note at the bottom of the output from the GPS measurement:
The GPS position taken on the carved pad compared with the latitude and longitude of the CALAIS OBSERVATORY station showed that the distance between the two points was but .1278 m or just over 5 inches.
Considering the GPS was set up in an approximate location estimated by eye to be the center of the pad, and no research was done to discover how the transit was set or positioned on the stone, nor how closely the flagpole on the roof above was positioned, this result is nothing short of astounding. Further research may allow a more accurate determination, but at this point it's clear that the original position of the Transit Stone has been reestablished and the layout of the site is much as it was in 1857, over 150 years ago.
I received an email about 2 months ago that the site behind the Calais Academy was to be established as a city park. So I was there on August 4th at a seminar giving the background on the station and later I was at the dedication ceremony at the site. I was immensely impressed by the local group of history buffs, who together with the local elected officials and agencies, and a donor who donated a significant property at the site to the city, made this project happen.
And all this cost the City of Calais exactly $0.00 (that's zero dollars and zero cents)! I'm amazed and humbled.
A photo of the dedication: Harold Nelson is explaining the details, Richard Auletta, president of the Historical Society is on the left and Jim Porter, city manager of Calais in behind in the back center. The transit stone makes a nice podium, don't you think?
Special Recognition:
Richard Auletta, who has worked tirelessly on preservation and understanding of the Calais Observatory
Gayle Moholland and the Highway Department of the City of Calais for moving the Transit Stone from the foot of the hill and returning it to
the original position.
Jim Porter, City Manager of Calais, who was the first contact Harold Nelson made on a hot July 3, 1998, and has been a supporter of this
project from the beginning. Jim provided Harold with a ladder to get to the top of the ‘clock stone’ to see if there were any markings on it.
Mike Johnson and Leonard Scott, property owners of significant portions of the site who each donated land to the city for the park.
Does this mean the station is no longer lost? Is it found? No, I'm afraid not. I would say it's not found due to the uncertainties mentioned above, and the lead bolt has disappeared, or perhaps never existed. The best we could say is that the original station was somewhere within about 5 inches of the center of the Transit Stone. But hey!, that's pretty d&mn good by my way of thinking!
Links: Harold Nelson has a number of web pages up concerning his research on this and related topics. This link is from the Alumni of Calais Academy page which in turn has links to many other related pages including Harold's:
And lastly, here is the GC log for this station including my logs which duplicate much of what is in this report:
hile in Calais, I recovered 4 pairs of stations in my spare time - 1909 triangulation stations paired with 1921 IBC Reference Monuments.
So what's with these double survey marker stations? All along the shore of the Saint Croix River, from it's mouth down in Robbinston up along the river into Aroostook County, the International Boundary Commission and it's Predecesssor the US and Canada Boundary Survey was tasked by the treaty of 1908 to define all the points in the Saint Croix river which constituted the boundary. This consisted of almost 1100 turning points - points in the river wherever the river made a turn - all the way from it's source in Amity in Aroostook County where the stream was but a trickle, down to it's mouth in Robbinston where it empties into Passamaquoddy Bay and it forms a broad stream between Maine and New Brunswick (and has 20+ foot tides). But none of these points is marked. They are out in the river, so they exist only on paper. They are virtual boundary points if you will. But in order to specify exactly where these points were, the shore line was carefully surveyed and hundreds of triangulation stations were put into place starting in 1909. These were usually disks, or sometimes drill holes in rocks. They used USC&GS old style tri-station disks (which had just come into use), since they did not have any disks of their own making till 4 or 5 years later, in the mid 1910s. Somewhat later (around 1912 or 1913) they produced a custom reference marker for this purpose - an 8 inch long bronze post suitably marked. There were a total of 245 of these put in along the US and Canadian shore lines of the St. Croix, starting with No. 2 near the source of the St. Croix to No. 246 down in Robbinston.
To save the cost of resurveying the whole river, they set these bronze posts right next to the 1909 tri-stations. Occasionally, when the older disk had broken off, they would simply put the newer marker right where the old disk had been. The first of these were set in 1913 near the source and In this area of the river the posts were put in place in 1921.
I managed to find four of these "Pairs", although one (Mon 246=Initial) no longer has a disk (it's position was taken over by the bronze monument), and another (#242 on St. Croix Island) has only the stub of a disk. One of them (Mon 239 / De Monts) was recovered by Harry Dolphin last year.
Incidentally, I consider my trip to St. Croix Island (aka Dochet island, aka Bone Island, aka De Monts Island) a bit of a coup. The National Park Service, which administers the Island, discourages visits due to the fragility of the landscape and allows private but not commercial trips - so there is no ferry service or boats-for-hire to get you there. I got a ride from a local lobsterman who was a friend of a friend and whom I met at the dedication of Meridian Park the day before.
Here are a few pictures:
And here are the GC logs:
Actually these (except for the first) have two log entries each, since the disk and the monument are separate stations, but I just put in the link for the disk.
eaked Mtn has nothing to do with either the EOA or the boundary, but it was quite a trek (both in the car and on foot) to get to. It's on the highest point of Aroostook County. It was an interesting search, I recommend you read the log.
Left: the disk in a cleft in the rock ledge
Right: a small cairn was left over the disk.
GC Log entry:
GeorgeL
NGS
68-eldo replied on on 20 August 2009 - 11:47 PM.
68-ELDO
AZcachemeister replied on on 25 August 2009 - 07:03 PM.