Many hikers are familiar with finding U.S.C.&G.S. (United States Coast and Geodetic Survey) disks on their favorite Adirondack peaks like this one:

The question then becomes, does this marker occupy the original Colvin hole?  Well, based on V. Colvins report to the N.Y.S. Legislators, apparently the Federal Government was removing his markers and setting their own as far back as the late 1800’s:

 

   Here is a picture of the crew at work on the same mountain top :

 

So, It would appear that it probably was standard practice for the Federal Government to remove Colvin’s bolt and replace it with one of their own (mines better than your’s thing ). On rare occasions they left Colvin’s marker in place (See Ruby Mtn. write up). Both Colvin and the U.S.C.&G.S. points were and still are subject to vandalizism, resulting sometimes in only a drill hole being found today. Many times it is not possible to ascertain the truth but occasionally with additional research a likelyhood can be established as to the question of does this disk occupy Colvin’s point.

Jim Vianna

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 8:12 PM and is filed under Colvin points. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.