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                                                 would have to cede several hundred square miles of land (and thousands of tax-
                                                 payers) along its eastern boundary, which the State was not willing to do. Nevada
                                                 achieved statehood in October 1864. The following map shows the area under ques-
                                                 tion, shaded gray.
                                                 Several events arose along this area in question and precipitated the surveys that
                                                 this project investigates, starting with a conflict that erupted in Lake County (later
                                                 known as Roop County) in the Nevada Territory and Plumas County, California, both
                                                 of which claimed Honey Lake Valley (now in Lassen County, California.) Isaac Roop,
                                                 who had been the Governor of the Provisional Nevada Territory from 1859 to 1861
                                                 and joined the new Territorial Senate in 1862, supported the Nevada border extend-
                                                 ing to the Sierra Nevada mountains. The dispute culminated in the “Sagebrush War”
                                                 of 1863 in Susanville, in which the Plumas County sheriff led a 100-man posse to
                                                 lay siege to Senator Roop’s cabin, injuring one man. In an article in Nevada Surveyor,
                                                 Robert Temple (2018) depicts the skirmish as a brief tussle, ending with a round of
                                                 drinks at the town saloon and an agreement to turn the dispute over to the Gover-
                                                 nors of the Nevada Territory and California to resolve.
         Map of the “disputed area” east of the Sierra Nevada
         mountains claimed by both California and the Nevada   This project explores original surveys and retracement surveys, including historical con-
           Territory between 1861 and 1864  (WP:NFCC#4),   texts, methods, and justifications for holding the three respective corner monuments:
             Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.
                     php?curid=62428213


                           Commissioning        Purpose                                 Lead Surveyor
                           Body
                           State of Cali-       Portion of Eastern Boundary from        John F. Kidder, Engineer in
                           fornia &             Lake Bigler (Tahoe) north to the 42     Charge
                                                                            nd
                           Territory of         Parallel
                           Nevada
                           US General           Portion of California-Oregon boundary   Daniel G. Major, U.S. Astrono-
                           Land Office                                                  mer and Surveyor
                           (GLO)
                           GLO                  Eastern boundary of T47&48N,            John C. Partridge, Deputy
                                                R16&17E (N.E. Corner of State)          Surveyor
                           GLO                  Eastern boundary of the State of        Allexey W. Von Schmidt, U.S.
                                                California …that portion of the 120     Astronomer and Surveyor
                                                                            th
                                                degree of Longitude West from
                                                Greenwich, lying between the 42nd
                                                and 39  degree of North Latitude
                                                      th
                           GLO                  Subdivision of T48N R17E                William Minto, Deputy Sur-
                                                                                        veyor


        The Cadastral Survey Records office of the California State Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) emailed PDF files of the
        available maps and field notes for the surveys and retracements of the northeast corner. I was able to download field notes for surveys
        from the Oregon and Nevada BLM Land Records offices. I will refer to each survey as it relates to the methods and results of my investi-
        gation. Other sources include articles by James Hulse, Paul Pace, Gregory Reed, and John Wilusz, as well as Francois Uzes’s descriptions
        of the procedural considerations of the surveys.

        Field notes and map documents provide the record of the work that each surveyor executed on the ground as ordered by the commis-
        sioning government body directing the survey. Therefore, another primary source of information was the 1855 version (and 1864 and
        1871 reprints with additional clarifications) of the Manual of Surveying Instructions that served to guide all three survey parties in their
        field procedures; the official title of the guide is Instructions to the Surveyors General of Public Lands of the United States for those Survey-
        ing Districts Established Since the Year 1850; Containing, also, a Manual of Instructions to Regulate the Field Operations of Deputy Surveyors
        (henceforth referred to as the Manual).

        The existence of new States and Territories of the still-growing United States depended on the monumentation of corners; defining
        geographical boundaries could be no more fundamental in the establishment of these new political spaces. The Manual did not explic-
        itly mention the establishment of state boundary corners, but it did give the instructions for the marking of corner boundaries. These
        instructions are relevant to the corner monuments that Kidder, Major, and Von Schmidt (and Partridge and Minto in their retracements)
        set in the years following the publication of the Manual and the 1864 and 1871 updates. As my research shows, Kidder set a hasty tone

        8 The Nevada Traverse Vol.50, No.4, 2023
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