Rewitness Card #56

1/4 corner common to Sections 30/29 of 1N10W on Bayocean

On January 1, 1987, a Tillamook County survey crew made up of Al Duncan, Al Dvorak, and Dan McNutt "rewitnessed" the monument for the quarter corner common to Sections 29 and 30 of Township 1 North, Range 10 West of the Willamette Meridian. On February 24, 2015, I found and photographed the brass cap they had set in concrete to replace a wood post that Samuel Snowden and his crew had placed there April 1, 1857, as part of the first General Land Office (GLO) survey of Tillamook County. It's the GLO monument that remains on Bayocean Spit.

This monument survived, while the others did not, because it served as the "Initial Point" for Bayocean Park. When the Potters drew up their subdivision plat in 1906, this was the place from which all lots were surveyed. Zoom in on the plat map and you'll see it at the far west end of 22nd Avenue. The Government Reservation border is the line dividing Sections 29 and 30.



Samuel Snowden GLO Field Notes April 1, 1857

In 2008, Terry Jones, of Bayside Surveying, surveyed the property discussed in Bayocean Eco-Park Rejected. His report refers to Rewitness Card # 56, which details the 1987 event discussed above. Jones also provided Oregon State Plane Coordinates for the monument, which Dan McNutt (now Tillamook County Surveyor) kindly converted to latitude/longitude (N  45.5442559 / W 123.9471265) so that I could find it.

Rewitness Card #56 discusses the conditions relative to what deputy surveyor Snowden wrote in his field notes on page 43 of OR-R0053. Snowden and the five other members of his crew hiked the entire length of Bayocean in one day, setting posts on dunes and in the hills along the way. He noted salal underbrush and forests, so this involved some serious bushwhacking. Snowden reported earlier in his notes that one crew member had quit because "he could not stand the thick brush and wading the swamps."