# 1855 GLO Survey Notes and Big Pines in NW Wis.



## max2cam (Feb 29, 2008)

I've been using the General land Office Survey notes from 1855 for my area of NW Wisconsin to see what was growning here on the Pine Barrens before the "big cut" (1860s-1910). It's quite interesting to plot the witness trees growing from 1855 against what the country looks like now. It's a great resource for Wisconsin forest landowners at:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/SurveyNotes/SurveyNotesHome.html

One question I have is about the distance of witness trees. A typical entry might read: "Black Pine 9 (inch dia.) S87 W840 links." 

When the surveyor gives the bearing and distance of the witness tree do you go straight in the first direction and take a right angle in the second direction? Also, are both directions measured in links (8.92 inches)? I've noticed that in some entries (like the one above) the second number is sometimes much larger. That's why I wonder if that first number might be something other than links, altho I'm thinking it is links.

Interesting too is that the 1855 surveyor here (Hiram Fellows) calls jack pine "black pine" and red pine "yellow pine," names that pretty much have totally vanished.

I'm doing this stuff to help my mapping of this local area where there are some very old and large white and red pines. The larger property was family owned since 1900 and they didn't log the more remote parts and the old time piney forest has grown back very well. 

Anyone else using the old GLO survey data?


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## max2cam (Mar 3, 2008)

I'm still at a loss how to interpret "distance and direction" of witness trees and the website doesn't explain it (altho I just emailed them for clarification).

A typical witness tree "distance and direction" entry might read: 

"Yellow Pine 19, S27, W185 links."

I understand that the yellow (red) pine is 19 inches in diameter and I know what links mean (1 link equals 7.92 inches), but what does the first number mean and how do you interpret those directions?

This must be widely known, but my dim brain doesn't get it yet.

PS: Will be going out once this perpetual snow melts to measure the big red & white pines along Totogatic river here. Probably no champs, but some are BIG and I know where there are others up along Moose River (Douglas County), which was famous for big white pine in the old days.

Thanks


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## John Paul Sanborn (Mar 5, 2008)

*My email to Rideout at WDNR*

John, I've forwarded this to a couple of our Foresters. Hope they'll have an answer for you, as I am clueless.
####

From: John Sanborn [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 4:48 PM
To: Rideout, Richard B - DNR
Subject: Fwd: New Post/Thread Notification: WI Champion Tree Forums

Hi ####, I was wondering if you know of someone who could help with this question in the WI champ, tree forum at ArboristSite.

Thanks


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## John Paul Sanborn (Mar 9, 2008)

John Paul Sanborn said:


> John, I've forwarded this to a couple of our Foresters. Hope they'll have an answer for you, as I am clueless.
> ####
> 
> From: John Sanborn [mailto:[email protected]]
> ...



_Here is the responce I got from DNR forestry

John,_ 

I believe the directions are in bearings as apposed to azimuth. So for the example that you showed: ("Yellow Pine 19, S27, W185 links.")

S27W means 27° West of South (on a Bearing compass) or 207° on an azimuth compass.

Also, this represents the distance and direction from the post to the bearing tree.



This diagram shows the several directions in both Bearings and Azimuths. The center of the circle would be the post set by the surveyor and the arrow points the direction to the bearing tree. Your example is in the same general direction as the S 30° W direction on the diagram (just 3 degrees less to the west). Hope this helps.


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## SuperDuty335 (Aug 22, 2008)

The response you got is correct. Bearings are read left to right but interpreted right to left: A bearing of *N85W* equals *85 degrees West of North* The latter number, being links in htis case, is of course the distance. You may also encounter chains, rods, or poles for distance. A rod and pole are synonymous as being 16.5 feet and a chain (which is 4 poles or rods) is 66 feet in length. If you have any questions feel free to email or "pm".

PS An azimuth is strictly an angle right from due North which begins at 0 and increase in a clockwise fashion to 360, at due North. If you need to convert bearings to azimuth or vise-versa I'll show you how.
-Jake


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## 056 kid (Oct 14, 2008)

This thread is VERY interesting


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## skid row (Jan 16, 2009)

056 kid said:


> This thread is VERY interesting



:agree2: Learning something neat.


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## skid row (Jan 17, 2009)

056 kid said:


> This thread is VERY interesting



I agree, learning something new here.


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## max2cam (Jan 28, 2009)

Thanks much for the good information and sorry for the delay. Now I understand how to read this witness tree data. I was under the wrong impression before but now that's cleared up.

It's really interesting reading the early survey notes. But they did make mistakes. Not far away near Hayward is a "Lost Land Lake" which they totally missed although it is rather large and crosses section lines. Also, here they got the river channel wrong by 1/4 to 1/3 mile in places. At first I thought that maybe it relocated its course, but in that area it runs in a deep riverbed with high uplands and it could not have relocated. I think some of the mistakes were made back in the office when platt maps were drawn up from the field nots and stuff got left out and blanks were filled in by guess if data was missing.

The early surveyors were amazing guys working under primitive and very harsh conditions.


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## SuperDuty335 (Feb 1, 2009)

You are probably right about the mistakes being made in the plat office. Cartography was truly an art and not so much a science in those times. The scale alone of a public land survey would easily cause mistakes in plotting rivers and creeks and so forth. I am surprised, however, that since the lake crosses a section line that it wasn't shown on a map. Typically in those times and even still today we try to "run" the actual lines when surveying, encountering everything across the line along the way. I wish I could retrace those old trees with you, but you're about a million miles away.


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## Greenstar (Mar 15, 2009)

So what have you all learned from these maps?
Are you talking about ancient/oldgrowth trees?

How about some statistics, sizes, etc..


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## bogiemsn (Mar 23, 2009)

Greenstar said:


> So what have you all learned from these maps?
> Are you talking about ancient/oldgrowth trees?
> 
> How about some statistics, sizes, etc..



More likely he's comparing what was seen in the original survey vs what we have now. The "big cut" the OP refers to was the wholesale rape of the forests of the upper midwest. Any marketable tree found in an accessible location was cut in the late 1800s early 1900s. The slash was left to rot or burn and burn it did. Once the timber barrons were finished with the land they sold it to immigrants as potential farm land. Not blaming the loggers I'm blaming the timber companies. We in WI never had trees the size of the ones in the PNW but there were a lot of pretty big trees the likes of which we never see anymore. Most all of our big trees are long gone. 

I've used the same resource for researching land in southwest WI. Down here the land surveys typically used the term "pitch" pine when referring to jack pine.


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## max2cam (Sep 21, 2009)

Greenstar said:


> So what have you all learned from these maps?
> Are you talking about ancient/oldgrowth trees?
> 
> How about some statistics, sizes, etc..



What I found right around my property area is that the modern forest is similar to what was growing here in 1855. That is, there were extensive areas of 6-8" jack pine to the north and west of me and that's what grows there today except where they planted red pine plantations. 

On my property and to the east the 1855 data shows a predominent red pine forest, with the largest trees recorded at that time about 2 feet dia. Curiously, my largest red pines today are also about 2 feet dia. This shows that the slash fires did not kill all the small trees after the time of the Big Cut, and that seed sources were available shown today by various age classes of natural growth red pine here. 

I do think the 1855 forest was more open than it is today, as low intensity ground fires kept the understory more open than the modern Smoky Bear forest. Whitetail deer are also having a HUGE impact on pine and even balsam regeneration here. DNR don't seem to care....


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## max2cam (Sep 21, 2009)

bogiemsn said:


> More likely he's comparing what was seen in the original survey vs what we have now. The "big cut" the OP refers to was the wholesale rape of the forests of the upper midwest. Any marketable tree found in an accessible location was cut in the late 1800s early 1900s. The slash was left to rot or burn and burn it did. Once the timber barrons were finished with the land they sold it to immigrants as potential farm land. Not blaming the loggers I'm blaming the timber companies. We in WI never had trees the size of the ones in the PNW but there were a lot of pretty big trees the likes of which we never see anymore. Most all of our big trees are long gone.
> 
> I've used the same resource for researching land in southwest WI. Down here the land surveys typically used the term "pitch" pine when referring to jack pine.



Going by memory here, but I've read accounts where occasional super canopy white pines in early Wisconsin were over 200 feet high and up to 12 feet in diameter. They figured these much larger than average and older trees dated back to some catastrophic event at a very distant time with the majority of still large virgin pines being younger, but still ancient by human standards.

Also, I found in an 1870s newspaper that on Totogatic River the largest pine ever cut up to that time in the old NW scaled 7300 brd ft, and that was taken only from 4 sixteen ft logs cut from the tree with the smallest end being 40 inches in dia.


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