Early Texas Surveyors
by Darla Bracken
When the great state of Texas was being surveyed for statehood in the 1840s, try to imagine the immense task that lay before these early pioneer specialists. Besides the loneliness, this job would have also presented the men in the field with many dangers and unusual experiences. Cadastral surveyors measured land boundaries and corrected for the curvature of the earth. Surveying crews were needed not only in all areas of Texas but also in the U.S. territories. It was not a one-person job; there were small crews with wagons for their supplies, instruments and ‘chuck’.
Early surveying tools included a Gunter’s chain, a surveyor’s magnetic compass, and a transit. The chain, which was named for an early 1600’s mathematician Edmund Gunter, was 66 feet long with 100 links, and was used for measuring distance. The compass was for measuring direction and was marked with ruled degrees. The transit with a telescope mounted on it for sighting was used to measure the angles or topography of the land. Although the chain is rarely used today, an acre is based upon this measurement and one acre is equal to 10 square chains or 100,000 square links. One mile equals 80 chains. A league of land in Texas meant 4,428 acres. Another early measurement the vara, or a Spanish yard, in Texas in the 1900s, was 33 1/3 inches.
Although the Panhandle area of Texas did not present the challenges that some elevations did, it was still a daunting task due to its lack of landmarks. Markers or monuments were placed by these early surveyors on meridians and at ‘corners’, section corners that is. These markers were sometimes huge piles of rocks or a slab of stone depending upon what materials were available. Surveyors tried to be as accurate as possible with these measurements and although many areas would be resurveyed, many times much of their work was accepted by later surveyors.
It was in July 1858 that John H. Clark accepted the federal appointment of surveying the Texas-New Mexico border boundary line. He went east from El Paso to the 32nd parallel and marked where it intercepted the 103rd meridian. Then he surveyed an area roughly 20 miles north on that line before being forced to stop due to lack of water. Later, beginning in the far northwest corner of the Panhandle, he surveyed and marked the corner and began surveying the boundary line south for 156 miles until lack of water and Indian unrest forced him to withdraw again leaving 130 miles of the boundary not surveyed between the lines. Then the Civil War came. Later surveys by John J. Major in 1874 and Richard O. Chaney in 1881 failed to agree on the northwest corner. In fact, the Chaney corner was 2 ¼ miles east of Clark’s; but, at the time William Benjamin Munson surveyed the Capitol Reservation Tract, the Chaney corner had not been marked. The Clark Survey was approved by Congress in 1891 even though it was never completely finished.
As it turned out when the lines were resurveyed by Munson for the XIT Ranch, Clark’s corner was accepted by Munson as a starting point. The survey by that time had been accepted for some 50 years and complicated by the fact that the Ranch was beginning to sell off its lands. James D. Hamlin, a Parmer County judge and land developer for the XIT Ranch, went to Washington, D.C. several times when New Mexico officials were applying for statehood and again were checking the boundary; they discovered that Clark’s corner was not on the 103rd meridian and that the boundary line near Texico, New Mexico showed to be about 3 ½ miles off. The State of Texas had followed Munson’s (and thus Clark’s) survey also in setting the boundary for the XIT. In 1911, John V. Farwell, one of the owners of the XIT, also went to Washington to speak directly to President Howard Taft, who had been his classmate at Yale, Class of 1880. At that time due to the length of time the boundary had been accepted as drawn and to prevent undue litigation and delay, the President made it a condition of statehood that the Clark Survey boundary be accepted. New Mexico accepted the conditions and became a state in 1912.
There are many types of surveys and today’s surveyors have much more accurate means of measurement including satellite global positioning [Google Earth]. Land surveys find areas of plots and fix boundaries. Topographical surveys measure elevations and depressions plus horizontal distance for mapmaking. An aerial survey finds distances and sizes on the ground by photographs usually from airplanes. This type of survey allows surveyors to see greater detail for mapping large areas. And we have all seen the spectacular views of our planet from the space shuttles. We can see ourselves as never before. Construction and engineering surveys are done when things such as bridges, buildings and roads are being built. When you purchase property, a surveyor is called in to check the property lines. Highway surveyors are even checking to make sure that those stripes are in the right place…still a big job with not a lot of room for error.