Marks with identical stamping

[Papa-Bear-NYC]

Recently, a friend was hiking in Baxter State Park in Maine (home of Katahdin) and climbed Doubletop Mountain, a nice climb about 5 miles west of Katahdin. Among his pictures, there was a shot of a USGS triangulation station stamped "MC NAIR 1929". Here is his album on Webshots: Album. Check out picture number 7 (second row, third over).

 

I looked it up in the NGS database, searching in the BSP area. Initially I found this: RF0726, but that seemed strange, since it was for a survey marker on Horse Mountain, which I had never heard of. I checked where it was and it seems it is a peak overlooking Grand Lake Metagamon, near the road into BSP from the north gate. But it was something like 10 miles from Doubletop. So I said to myself "Oh, he must have been hiking up there and mixed the photos up". But then I looked further (search for Designation "MCNAIR" in Maine) and found that there are no less than 6 stations in northern Maine, and the datasheet for all of them say "A U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY DISK STAMPED MC NAIR 1929", and all of them are on mountain tops under fire towers, including Horse Mountain, Beetle Mountain, Norway Bluff, Big Spencer, Sobunge Mountain and Deboullie Mountain. And this list must be just part of the story since it didn't include Doubletop (not unusual - many USGS marks are not in the NGS database). Seems like Mr. Mc Nair, whoever he was, was a busy guy in 1929.

 

Have others come across similar cases of identical stamping on survey markers? It sure makes identification trickier.

Edited September 21, 2006 by Papa-Bear-NYC

[+Black Dog Trackers]

McNair musta been their Maine man!

 

Imagine that McNair guy forgetting to bring along his stamping set 6 times!

 

I looked in the data that BuckBrooke downloaded a few months back. Maine has 9 stations called "TIDAL 2".

[Z15]

USGS is notorious for duplicate names. They had so many survey crews over many different years doing things they though best at the time that seem stupid today. I'll bet 1/2 of the people working on those surveys had no idea what the heck was going on, it was just a job and they lived for the time off with the beer and the ladies. LOL

Edited September 22, 2006 by Z15

[DaveD]

I've checked the original USGS horizontal control records. The survey chief of party was a Mr. E. L. McNair who was responsible for a fairly large network survey during 1929. Unfortunately the USGS data sheets do not indicate what was actually stamped on the disks so we must rely on the later recovery information from USC&GS.