Colvin Reports

Here is the actual report as told in Prof. Fuertes own words and as extracted from “REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE STATE LAND SURVEY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK FOR THE YEAR 1898″ edited by Norman J. Van Valkenburgh , The Adirondack Research Center of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, 1989, first edition.

(Click on the individual page to open it in a larger window for ease of viewing)

 Items worthy of note are: The Professor being upset with the monument being 1 mm out of position, 20 days to go 1,144 feet and a difference in the two runs of 0.002± of a foot.

C. Howard Johannessen, L.S., ENYSLS President accepting on behalf of ENYSLS

Kurt Heiss, L.S. (crew webmaster) receiving the coveted “crew pin” along with  membership in the Crew.

More pictures can be found at the ENYSLS website  http://www.enysls.org/pictures/5-2009/index.html

Thanks again,

Jim Vianna, Superintendent

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

Many people ask me if Colvin or his crew occupied every mountain to perform their work. Well it depends on what you mean by occupy. Yes, every mountain located had to have at least a bolt and signal placed upon it, but not every mountain was occupied by theodolite. One way you can determine this in the field is to look for small drill holes set out in a roughly equilateral triangle around the station mark. The triangles formed by these drill holes will have bases of three – four feet and be about three feet distant from the station mark. The purpose of these drill holes was to allow for the instrument tripod feet to have a place to rest in so they would not kick out if hit or blown about in heavy wind.

Here is a picture of one:

 Here is a recent picture from the top of West Mtn. and our Raquette Lake recovery showing the station mark in the middle with the three foot holes in a triangle marked with white powder.

 As Colvin wrote in his 1874 report:

And that’s the tip of the day.

Jim Vianna