PLSO The Oregon Surveyor Sept/Oct 2020

13 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon |  www.plso.org Featured Article Photo 7: Unearthing a lot corner. a large aggregate operation started min- ing the undeveloped land south of the highway and west of the Deschutes River. 2000 Reroute of Cook Avenue and a Slight Encroachment In 2000, I was working for the Deschutes County Road Department. Not only had the intersection of Cook Avenue and High- way 20 become extremely dangerous, but the entirety of Cook Avenue south of the highway was treacherous since it traveled through a busy aggregate op- eration that had crushing and stockpile operations on both sides of the road. The county was investigating a reroute of Cook to the west around the opera- tion when a slight encroachment glitch was discovered. Since themid-1950s, Bend Aggregate and Paving had mined a substantial portion of the county’s land to the west of their property (Photo 3). At the time the Cook Avenue re-routewas being explored, Bend Aggregate was in the process of selling their operation to another local construc- tion company, Hap Taylor & Sons. The County came to an agreement with Hap Taylor and Sons to convey the en- tire county owned tax lot to Taylor in exchange for Taylor building the new Cook Avenue re-route at no cost to the public. However, the area of the county land had to be determined to make sure that this trade was equitable to both the public and Taylor. The Road Department surveyors were tasked with determining and monu- menting the boundaries of the county property along with private property to the north where the Tumalo Feed Compa- ny restaurant was located. The restaurant owners would need to be party to land exchanges and road dedications for the proposed realignment. The Worst Survey You’ve Ever Seen This southern part of Laidlaw sat fallow from 1904 until the aggregate operation started up in the 1950s. The only survey of record for the area was, at first blush, a piece of paper so worthless that’d you’d be hesitant to paper train a puppy on it for fear of insulting the puppy’s intelli- gence. Survey CS10244 by Aubrey Perry, was an undated, barely legible black and white copy of a tax map with some ran- dom symbols, hand-drawn bold lines and faded cross hatching. There were no dis- tances, bearings, narrative or the other such necessities you’d expect to find on a valid survey (Photo 4). As my heart sank while viewing this mas- terpiece, a couple of key details came into focus causing me to mumble a half audi- ble “Eureka!” (Photo 5). The simple legend showed that the solid circles were “Steel Pins inOriginal Corners.” So Perry had found original 1904 corners, likely wooden stakes, and driven steel pins into them. He had also set other steel pins (shown as open circles), probably based on record bearings and distances. If we could lock onto the original corners he had perpetuated with “steel pins” (which turned out to be #4 rebars) we could cad up the plat, lock onto some of his found original corners and generate search points for other original wooden stakes. To give Perry his due, he was a prolific sur - veyor whose professional career spanned over 65 years. Aubrey E. Perry (1895– 1985) was licensed as PE #142 in 1919 and PLS #1293 in 1977. The last survey he filed in Deschutes County was in 1984. He served as Deschutes County Survey- or twice, from 1959–1970 and again from 1972–1976 for a total of 15 years. He was renowned for having total recall regard- ing any PLSS corner he’d ever visited and he has a good reputation in Central Ore- gon. He was a highly respected surveyor continues on page 14 T