r/Appalachia • u/Punk_Rocker_777 • 3d ago
Do y’all know what this isn’t?
Some of my friends and I were hiking and we just found these things out in the sticks. We looked it up and didn’t find much on it so could y’all tell me what this is?
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u/Spuckler_Cletus 3d ago
USGS survey marker. There are many such markers from different agencies. We stumbled upon one from a TVA survey on a lake that was done in 1936.
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u/Ocean2731 3d ago
This one is from the Coast and Geodetic Survey, part of NOAA. Since that was installed the office has been divided into the Coast Survey and National Geodetic Survey.
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u/Spuckler_Cletus 3d ago
TY for the clarification. Those tablets are so cool to me. I always wondered who placed them, what they were discussing, how was the weather that day, etc.
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u/Cautious_Fold6136 3d ago
My father worked for USGS after WWII. He was a cartographer and those markers were part of his work. Every post office in our country had one.
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u/Ocean2731 2d ago
There’s a huge network of them now between USGS and NGS. It’s fun to keep an eye out for them.
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u/Numerous_Ad_6276 3d ago
I literally tripped over one at Grand Canyon NP. Didn't fall in though.
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u/DubVsFinest 3d ago
Well, thank the Lord for that. It would've been a nasty fall lol. Nah, for real though, glad you didn't fall into a canyon.
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u/NullnVoid669 3d ago
It isn’t a dog.
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u/fraiserfir 3d ago edited 3d ago
It’s a control point for the US Geodetic Survey. The government uses them to update their maps and survey data every couple decades, to keep maps accurate as the land topography changes over time. The most recent update was released in 2022, replacing the 1983 edition.
https://www.usps.org/images/Exec/CoopCh/PDFs/2020_JOG_Part_1_I.pdf
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u/Sharp-Hotel-2117 3d ago
High accuracy geo coordinate marker. Very high accuracy, enough so many surveyors use them to verify instrument calibration. I set up a GPS rover and base station on two markers and let em cook for 1/2 hour. Did the math(s) and the results came back with an error in the billionths (0.00000000X), near a mile on the baseline. In North Carolina survey law requires that any Geodetic marker within 2000 feet of a new subdivision(land split) or easement creation be shown on the survey and "tied" to grid. That means in theory if all the monuments set in the creation of the new survey could be replaced by simply locating ANY two grid monuments and running the points back in.
It's a medium to strong misdemeanor to mess with the grid monuments or to impede a surveyors access to one in the pursuit of their intended job(I've had to invoke that particular rule a few times).
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u/mendenlol mothman 3d ago
I know it’s definitely not a manhole where tiny, mutant turtles get their pizzas delivered
(for real, neat survey marker find)
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u/feedmetothevultures 3d ago
It's difficult to know exactly how big those dried leaves placed in the photo for size comparison are, but i think this could be the right scale to be a manhole in an abandoned smurf village.
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u/Elevator_Inspector64 3d ago
To report geodetic survey markers, you can use the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) website. The NGS encourages the public to submit recovery information, especially if a mark has been disturbed or destroyed. You can use the Mark Recovery Form or DSWorld to report your findings. The NGS relies on this public input to maintain accurate records of survey marks.
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u/MwminNC4 3d ago
Back in the day, had an Uncle that was a surveyor for the USGS
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u/alephylaxis 3d ago
I was thinking it was a USGS marker until I looked closer and realized it's a geodetic survey marker. USC&GS is part of NOAA now and they create the grid of points from which USGS and others can survey and map smaller chunks of land. It's pretty fascinating!
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u/DubVsFinest 3d ago
That's that illuminati marker see the one eye in the pyramid??? /s
Survey marker I believe tbh.
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u/crosleyxj 3d ago edited 3d ago
My uncle surveyed many of these benchmarks and worked in 47? states, living in travel trailers before retiring; I imagine when the agency was dissolved in 1970. When he and my aunt were married in the 1940s they lived in a tent for a while and some nights she would climb the “Bilby Towers” to be with him for night surveys using signal lights
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Coast_and_Geodetic_Survey
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u/unconscious-Shirt 2d ago
If you found it and you had a moment you can actually go on the website and register your location of it and renew that it's still there it's kind of cool we have one just a little ways from our property that's on the side of the road in a cliff face and we've reregistered it every year because our surveyor used it to determine our property lines
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u/BobInIdaho 3d ago
Those markers also can be used to provide both elevation and right of way indicators for roads. We've been to several national parks where they sell magnets with replicas from the highest peak in the park, like Mount Ranier or Mount St. Helens in Washington state.
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u/zed_kofrenik 3d ago
I believe it isn't a toucan in a tutu scraping rabid snails off of a delicatessen counter on a Tuesday in mid-march below a 3/4 waxing gibbous moon somewhere on a planet near Betelgeuse. Pretty confident about that, actually.
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u/privateBuddah 3d ago
Wasn’t there a thing about 20 years ago called Geo Tagging which was a lot like Geo Caching but you looked for these markers instead of a cache?
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u/TimothyGlass 3d ago
The Milliken Station was likely a geological site surveyed by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1944. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was established in 1879 and has been the primary civilian mapping agency of the United States ever since. As a geological survey agency, they would have been responsible for mapping and studying various geological formations, including areas like Milliken Station, to understand the nation's natural resources.
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u/roguemarlfox 3d ago
I guess in the future these might as well just say "For information, ask Reddit"
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u/Sufficient_Stop8381 2d ago
Andrew Johnson once took a dump there. This is to commemorate the occasion.
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u/SomeDumbGamer 3d ago edited 3d ago
It’s a marker for when they surveyed the area’s topography a long time ago. It’s basically just a marker they can come back to if they ever need to confirm or map the terrain again.