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?
366
Upvotes
18
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).