Gordon v. Booker

Boundary Line — Location of Half-section Corner — Survey — Finding against Evidence. — In an action to quiet title to city lots, where the only point in controversy was the location of a half-section line running east and west, which formed the north boundary line of the city, and the controversy turned .upon the location of the half-section corner on the east side of the section, the testimony of the surveyor, who surveyed and platted an addition to the city, and ran the half-section line to which plaintiff claimed, that in surveying it he found a stake which he assumed and believed to be the half-section corner, taken in connection with the testimony of five other witnesses, including three professional surveyors, that the corner from which the survey was made was a “charcoal” or “government” corner, in the absence of any evidence showing that a stake or corner had ever been seen at a different place in that vicinity, is sufficient to establish it as a government corner; and a finding that the line was twenty-four feet north of the line so surveyed, based on a survey and measurement by courses and distances from the southeast corner of another section, a distance of a mile and half south of the stake in question, is unsupported by the evidence.

Id. — Monuments Control Courses and Distances — Evidence of Survey. — The monuments or marks placed upon the ground by the surveyor in making a survey constitute the survey, and the courses and distances are only evidence of the survey. Although evidence based upon courses and distances from other known points is admissible to fix a corner, where no corner is found, it is not admissible to change the location of an original corner of the survey when found.

Id. — Line of Government Survey — Lower Order of Evidence — Support op Finding—Immaterial Conflict. —Where the existence of the monuments established by a government surveyor in making the original survey are proved, evidence of a line of the survey based upon courses and distances, being of a lower order than evidence thereof based upon the monuments, raises no material conflict in support of a finding as to the location of the line, unless it demonstrates to a reasonable probability that the monuments as found upon the ground are not those established by the original survey.

Id.—Locating Line of Half-section — Starting-point—Survey by Courses and Distances. — In locating the line of a government half-section, a survey from a remote corner of another section by courses and distances is more liable to error than a survey by courses and distances from the nearest established corner of the same section.

Id. — Direction of Half-section Line —Monuments Control. —When the half-section corner on each side of a section are definitely located, the half-section line must be drawn from one corner to the other, regardless of its variation from the due east and west course.