Aletheia Kallos aletheiak@gmail.com [boundarypointpoint]
2017-11-08 00:16:41 UTC
reemerged briefly from trypointing retirement this week when i noticed usgs
topos of my home county of columbia in upstate new york depicting no fewer
than a dozen boundary stones round about the town of ghent which adjoins my
home town of hillsdale while strangely enough the same usgs mapping shows
fewer than half a dozen other town line markers within the entire remainder
of the county notwithstanding that this county includes some 20 other
municipalities http://www.columbiacountyny.com/map.html
& my curiosity was piqued not just by this unexpectedly heavy concentration
of markers around a single town of which nearly all were road stones &
hence easily accessible even to a cripple in a heavy rain but piqued all
the moreso by the presence of the only quadritown point in the entire
county which was just sitting there beckoning to me from the northwest
corner of ghent where it meets the towns of kinderhook stockport &
stuyvesant http://www.mytopo.com/maps/?lat=42.3463&lon=-73.72921&z=16
because i was already familiar with the also nearby quadricounty point in
the middle of the hudson river us2ny3abcugrre that columbia shares with
albany greene & rensselaer counties & which i had visited as best i could
many years ago by borrowing a leaky punt someone had evidently abandoned on
a nearby shore in this same abovementioned town of stuyvesant which thus
happens to enjoy not just 1 but 2 quadripoints
https://www.digital-topo-maps.com/county-map/new-york.shtml the quadritown
point was the only megapoint that remained for me to try in my own
neighborhood
inasmuch as an old topo from 1933 showed a marker at this location
Loading Image...
tho the contemporary topo referenced
above does not show one there i had no idea what to expect so i carefully
circumnavigated the town of ghent in order to check out the dozen locations
where the contemporary topo shows the road stones in order to gain some
idea of what kind of a quadripoint marker i might be looking for & expect
to find
the circumnavigation turned up 4 different sorts of potential markers
the first one that caught my eye turned out to be something which on closer
examination i guessed was a wildlife camera someone had strapped to a tree
just in the location where i was expecting the town line marker so i admit
this totally extraneous & irrelevant gadget fascinated & fooled me at first
tho not for long
then at a second location where the topo led me to expect another town line
marker i found a plastic yellow stanchion about 4 feet in height
but this object also proved to be extraneous when i realized it was
associated with the gas pipeline that coincided with the town line in that
location
at other prospective marker locations i saw strands of red surveyors tape
which struck me as much more plausible than either of the other marker
candidates
& finally i found in 2 other locations a matching pair of prismatic
obeliskoid pillars of reinforced concrete which looked far more like
conventional boundary markers than any of the other stuff i had yet found &
which i thus decided was the most likely form to resemble the marker i was
still expecting to find at the quadritown location which i was saving for
last
so when i finally reached the quadripoint area i set out to look for
another one of these prismatic obeliskoids
i had to sneak past a farmhouse where fortunately nobody was at home & then
into the large field behind it which i scanned & scoured without success
until a strand of red survey tape tied in a bow & attached to a low tree
branch caught my notice
inscribed on the tape were the words
approx town line
&
4-town intersect
ah so
for this was success of a sort
seeing that this was all there was to be found
& the presumably gps located identification was unmistakeable
tho removing boundary markers is illegal i assumed this was not an official
demarcation & carefully tore off the inscribed portion of the tape &
pocketed it as a souvenir without disturbing the bow or branch
topos of my home county of columbia in upstate new york depicting no fewer
than a dozen boundary stones round about the town of ghent which adjoins my
home town of hillsdale while strangely enough the same usgs mapping shows
fewer than half a dozen other town line markers within the entire remainder
of the county notwithstanding that this county includes some 20 other
municipalities http://www.columbiacountyny.com/map.html
& my curiosity was piqued not just by this unexpectedly heavy concentration
of markers around a single town of which nearly all were road stones &
hence easily accessible even to a cripple in a heavy rain but piqued all
the moreso by the presence of the only quadritown point in the entire
county which was just sitting there beckoning to me from the northwest
corner of ghent where it meets the towns of kinderhook stockport &
stuyvesant http://www.mytopo.com/maps/?lat=42.3463&lon=-73.72921&z=16
because i was already familiar with the also nearby quadricounty point in
the middle of the hudson river us2ny3abcugrre that columbia shares with
albany greene & rensselaer counties & which i had visited as best i could
many years ago by borrowing a leaky punt someone had evidently abandoned on
a nearby shore in this same abovementioned town of stuyvesant which thus
happens to enjoy not just 1 but 2 quadripoints
https://www.digital-topo-maps.com/county-map/new-york.shtml the quadritown
point was the only megapoint that remained for me to try in my own
neighborhood
inasmuch as an old topo from 1933 showed a marker at this location
Loading Image...
tho the contemporary topo referencedabove does not show one there i had no idea what to expect so i carefully
circumnavigated the town of ghent in order to check out the dozen locations
where the contemporary topo shows the road stones in order to gain some
idea of what kind of a quadripoint marker i might be looking for & expect
to find
the circumnavigation turned up 4 different sorts of potential markers
the first one that caught my eye turned out to be something which on closer
examination i guessed was a wildlife camera someone had strapped to a tree
just in the location where i was expecting the town line marker so i admit
this totally extraneous & irrelevant gadget fascinated & fooled me at first
tho not for long
then at a second location where the topo led me to expect another town line
marker i found a plastic yellow stanchion about 4 feet in height
but this object also proved to be extraneous when i realized it was
associated with the gas pipeline that coincided with the town line in that
location
at other prospective marker locations i saw strands of red surveyors tape
which struck me as much more plausible than either of the other marker
candidates
& finally i found in 2 other locations a matching pair of prismatic
obeliskoid pillars of reinforced concrete which looked far more like
conventional boundary markers than any of the other stuff i had yet found &
which i thus decided was the most likely form to resemble the marker i was
still expecting to find at the quadritown location which i was saving for
last
so when i finally reached the quadripoint area i set out to look for
another one of these prismatic obeliskoids
i had to sneak past a farmhouse where fortunately nobody was at home & then
into the large field behind it which i scanned & scoured without success
until a strand of red survey tape tied in a bow & attached to a low tree
branch caught my notice
inscribed on the tape were the words
approx town line
&
4-town intersect
ah so
for this was success of a sort
seeing that this was all there was to be found
& the presumably gps located identification was unmistakeable
tho removing boundary markers is illegal i assumed this was not an official
demarcation & carefully tore off the inscribed portion of the tape &
pocketed it as a souvenir without disturbing the bow or branch