2018 Issue

69 D uring the Utah Council of Land Surveyors (UCLS) 2016 Con- vention that was held at the Dixie Convention Center in St. George Utah, Daniel W. Webb – Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Chief Cadastral Surveyor, Utah State Of- fice, approached several UCLS Board members and hinted that UCLS should consider re-monumenting the Tri-State Monument located at the northwest corner of Arizona, the southwest cor- ner of Utah, and the easterly state line of Nevada. You see, the UCLS and the BLM worked together to re-monument several other monuments over the years, the last two being 1) the Uintah Special Meridian (USM) Initial Point in 2009 and 2) the Tri-State corner locat- ed at Idaho, Nevada, and Utah in 1999. During its June 11, 2016 board meeting the UCLS Executive Board discussed this re-monumentation project and unanimously approved to move for- ward with it. Seeing that the project location is located within the bound- aries of its Color Country Chapter, this project was assigned to them to take to task. Todd E. Jacobsen, PLS, Color Country Chapter President sent a for- mal email to the BLM Arizona, Nevada, and Utah Cadastral Survey Chief’s, outlining and requesting BLM’s involvement as well as emails to the Arizona Professional Land Surveyors (APLS), and the Nevada Association of Land Surveyors (NALS) association boards seeking their assistance in the project as well. The Re-monumentation of the Tri-State Monument for Arizona, Nevada, and Utah By Todd E. Jacobsen, PLS UCLS, Color Country Chapter President City Surveyor, City of St. George On July 6, 2016 and shortly after this assignment was given, Todd, Bob H. Hermandson, PLS, Color Country Chapter Vice President, and Michael Draper, PLS, UCLS Color Country member visited the site to get a feel for what it looked like, what condition it was in, and for what needed to be done to make this project work. After some thoughts and discussion it was decided that we needed to hold a chapter luncheon and start discussing the details and get answers to our what’s, why’s, how’s, and who’s of mak- ing this happen. Note: At this point the existing mon- ument was a red sandstone shaft that according to survey notes had a shaft of six feet long, 16 inches broad and 12 inches thick. From the top down it was dressed (or smoothed out) 8 inches and was marked with letters 1½ inch square deeply engraved in the stone. There are four sides to this monument, with the NEVADA on the N.W., UTAH on the N.E., ARIZONA on the S.E. and INTL. MONT 37 N. L. 1901 on the S.W. faces. Also according to the survey notes there was a raised mound of stones with a 5½ foot base and 2½ feet high surrounding the shaft, of which most are still there. This monument also stood about 3 - 3½ feet above the ground. This monument was set in 1901 and when seen on this outing it showed signs of weathering and some graffiti (engravings from some of its visitors), but all in all was in decent condition. The Color Country Chapter began to hold several luncheons where a number of designs of the new monument were presented and discussions of what types of tools and materials were need- ed. We were sure that we wanted to complete this project before the next UCLS convention that was to be held in February of 2017 so we could hold a ribbon cutting type ceremony in con- junction with the convention. Because the BLM, APLS, and NALS organiza- tions couldn’t attend these luncheons due to distance and time to travel Todd kept in touch with them via emails and phone calls and kept everyone up to date on the plans for the re-monumen- tation project. During this same time the BLM was also busy doing its own planning for a proposed re-survey of the State lines. They were also busy performing records research, resulting in a number of excellent pieces of infor- mation to aid us in this project. Just about August of 2016, plans started coming together and a fundraiser was organized. Collaboration from the BLM,