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Show C M C M Y K Y K A4 Sanpete Messenger/Gunnison Valley Edition To Sanpete County is a beautiful county with lots of boundless, wide open space. However, there is a surprising aspect to Sanpete’s vast landscape; a large percentage of official land descriptions are also boundless. As a land surveyor and civil engineer located in Fairview, I can say that’s a problem. Let’s dig deeper into the boundless descriptions kept in the Sanpete County Recorder’s Office. Legal descriptions precisely detail the boundaries of your land, how to locate it, and what you own and what your neighbor does not, right? Just get your deed and call a surveyor to fix you right up If only it were so simple! A very common kind of land description is a metes and bounds description. The “metes” are the bearing (direction) and distance measurements around a land parcel. “Bounds” are reliable natural features or permanent manmade structure, like a prominent boulder, the center of a stream, buildings, roads, fences, or metal pipes and wooden stakes placed by a surveyor. Many folks erroneously believe that a land description that only lists the metes is a “metes and bounds” description. Actually, such a description is a metes without bounds description. In practice, a typical metes-only description may make it difficult to accurately locate your boundaries. Straightforward application of metes-only descriptions, strictly according to the numbers, may even incorrectly place a boundary line. That’s because the metes are only as good as the bounds they originated from. For a surveyor trying to retrace property lines, it is critical to have specific bounds listed in the legal description, and then to be able to locate them on the ground. Sanpete was originally surveyed by the U.S General Land Office (GLO) between 1856 and 1900. The GLO surveyors used a chain and a compass/transit. Review of original field notes reveals that chaining occurred at a brisk pace. These pioneering surveyors literally trotted across the countryside measuring with the chain. Retracing many of their footsteps and comparing their distance measurements to each other or to modern electronic and satellite distance- measuring technology has produced significant differences. How do we resolve these differences? The original surveyors placed special bounds on the ground, called section corner monuments. Originally, land was divided into townships and then subdivided into sections. The bounds usually were marked stones or wood posts and were set at half-mile intervals along the section lines. Property corners and boundaries are controlled by these bounds (original physical markers), not the metes that may vary from survey to survey. The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) was created to survey the land, place the bounds, and create field notes and plats before the land was transferred from federal to private ownership. Once the land went private, local government was to maintain the bounds. This is where the system broke down or, as I like to say, slid off the rails. There are few Sanpete County records beyond the original PLSS survey of the GLO. Also, most of the original bounds monuments were susceptible to disturbance by nature and the activities of man, and therefore were obliterated or destroyed, especially in the valley. Sanpete County Surveyor’s records should have been kept on the location and status of all section corners from day one, but to my knowledge Sanpete County does not have records before 1989, and few since. The very bounds that the whole fabric of the land ownership system is founded upon were allowed to wither and die on the vine. Add to that 150 years of further subdivision into smaller parcels where bounds should have been placed at new corners and specifically called for in the descriptions. This is critical for maintaining boundaries and retracing them at later dates. This simply didn’t happen and has lead to the present day quagmire where the visitation of a metes-only surveyor may be a disastrous event for landowners. If physical bounds were present on ground, and written descriptions of them were included in all deeds, common boundaries between neighbors would be easier to clearly locate. Thus, the bounds are far more important than the metes. Moving forward, we should take the necessary steps to solve this conundrum. Sanpete is on the verge of fast- paced growth and development like other rural communities close to the Wasatch Front. As a community, we should avoid nasty and expensive boundary disputes with our neighbors. Boundaries should be marked by bounds, and those bounds listed in land descriptions, and the metes need to be updated to accommodate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and satellite measuring systems (GPS). You may believe that your deed’s metes accurately give the location of your property, but the reality is they probably don’t. Without the bounds, it is almost impossible to determine with certainty the point at which metes measurements begin, continue and end. You can’t measure a thing from square one unless you know where square one is. Therefore, while the metes may give a somewhat accurate description of the area and dimensions of your property ,there’s no guarantee that where your property is now is the same place that it would be when measured from originally-placed bounds. Without the bounds fixed in the ground and written into the description, it’s difficult to reconcile the metes on paper to the physical reality. Landowners deserve and should demand easily available and accurate computer data and descriptions that locate things on the ground with reliability. Sanpete County landowners should insist upon the separation of the combined Recorder/ Surveyor’s office and return to the election of a licensed professional county surveyor with a mandate to maintain and perpetuate the bounds of our land ownership system. The boundless quagmire just worsens every year. Leon Day graduated from Utah State University in agriculture and irrigation engineering and has been a private land surveyor and engineering consultant in Utah and Sanpete counties for the past 15 years. the editor... for letters-to-the-editor policy go to www. sanpetemessenger.com, click on ‘opinions’ then ‘letters to the editor’ Leon Day Surveyor and Engineer The boundless boundaries of Sanpete Wednesday, July 30, 2008 We welcome and enjoy letters sent in by our readers. Please be aware of the following policies when submitting Letters to the Editor: 1) You may submit Letters to the Editor by • email: news@sanpetemessenger.com • fax: (435) 835-1493 • mail or in person: 35 S. Main Street, Manti, Utah 84642; 2) Letters are limited to 350 words in length, and to one letter per month per reader; 3) Letters must include the author’s name, hometown and phone number (phone numbers will not be published); 4) Letters must not contain potentially slanderous or libelous language, insults, personal attacks, commercial promotions or personal messages; 5) The Messenger reserves the right to edit Letters to the Editor for any reason deemed appropriate, such as for clarity, taste, grammar and space. “When you really need your car to go” LOOK FOR GOOD CAR BUYS HERE! a s r r y e v Sale i n n A U 8 YEARS! 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