PLSO The Oregon Surveyor Mar/Apr 2019

12 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 42, No. 2 fall into disorder. It was proposed in 1901 to actually move the building to the main campus and use it for historical records in a fireproof setting. This never hap- pened and in 1904 it was ordered to “… dispose of and remove the observatory building…”. The University placed an ad and took bids for the sale of the property and the observatory of which four were received, and all rejected, ranging from $51.75 to $502.50. It was then during the early morning hours of May 12, 1905 that an explosion was heard and shortly thereafter the Astronomical Observatory was fully engulfed with flames. The fol- lowing morning dynamite, was used to finish off the structure and later in the afternoon another blast tore apart any memory of the old structure. The observatory was so much more than an outdated eyesore though. It served as the basis for all geodetic control work in SouthernOregon andNorthern California. In May of 1884, when the observatory was still used on a daily basis, Samuel Stinson Gannett spent countless nights studying and measuring the stars. Gan- nett spent ten nights alone determining the precise latitude of 34 pairs of stars. As reported to The Eugene Guard on July 6, 1894 the latitude was 44°03’28.9” North. The determination of longitude was much more complicated though. A wire was literally stretched from the observatory to the Western Union Telegraph Office in Eugene. With the precise readings of a chronometer hooked to the telegraph wire to the San Francisco observatory a time difference could be measured as the same pair of stars crossed the me- ridian. This measurement was 2 minutes and 39.096 seconds later than San Fran- cisco. The time converted to longitude equated to 39 minutes and 46.4 seconds West of the longitude at the observatory in California. The final longitude was tab- ulated as 123°05’28” West. This process was repeated for five nights and the final numbers compared. The work of Gannett was one of precision and accuracy. If he would have been off by a mere second (time) in his measurements his longitude would have placed him 1095.31’ West of the actual position. This is based on a dis- tance of 262,886.76 feet for one degree of longitude at the given latitude by Gan- nett. Geographically, this would fall near the old Basalt Quarry, nicknamed “The Columns”, at the Western edge of Skin- ner Butte. The calculations of a young Gannett can be checked by dividing the time difference by 4 as we know that 360° = 24 hours and 15° = 1 hour and 1° = 4 minutes. His calculations check to within 0.000044 of a second. This station, along with the accompanying baseline, were the basis for all control in southwestern Oregon. The 38,425.3 foot baseline was measured twice with a 300 foot steel tape by USGS surveyor WilliamTudor Griswold. continued T Featured Article