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Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 421 preparation of maps and plats. By 1877 there were 16 surveyors general, mostly political appointees having some knowledge of law but little of the science of surveying and indeed little experience in the field. Their appropriations permitted the appointment of numerous clerks-one office had 40-and the awarding of substantial and apparently lucrative surveying contracts, if we may judge by the scramble for the patronage. But the private contractors constantly complained that the pay was too small. To make a profit, they maintained, they had to skimp and neglect the prescription for their work drawn up by the Land Office. Many of the surveys were done carelessly, some indeed fraudulently, and were inaccurately marked only by perishable or easily removed corners such as blazes on trees, wooden stakes lightly driven into the soil, or small mounds of earth raked upon the prairie. Cattle tramped down mounds of earth and Indians pulled up the stakes for fuel. In Utah the Mormons were said to have plowed up the mounds and resurveyed the land into 5-and 10-acre lots. A California surveyor told the Public Land Commission, "The surveys on the east side of the Santa Clara Valley are wretchedly done. I have yet to find a single line that measures a mile accurately, and have yet to find the first corner-stone. ... I have known men whose work demonstrated that they were not fit to be employed as deputy surveyors." Another California surveyor declared that as long as the contract system was used the surveys would not be faithfully done. He reported cases where lines were from a quarter to a full mile from meeting, that surveyors' notes did not report forests, and that for many townships in which only a little work was done full pay was exacted. Supervision of the surveys and maps and plats was wholly inadequate to prevent widespread frauds. Months or years after the original surveys, when landlookers could find no evidence of corners or learned that the lines had been inaccurately run, the Land Office had to order resurveys, sometimes three or four times. Such surveys left in their wake a host of problems for the Land Office. The compensation for surveying parties was held up until the accuracy of their work was determined; this necessitated a full-time staff of investigators to examine and report on the surveys in the western offices and in the field. Even examiners were bribed to approve defective surveys and it might be years before the errors and fraud were brought to light. Contractors defaulted, bondsmen proved unreliable, judgments were filed against the parties responsible, and litigation between the government and these parties and between different owners over indeterminate boundaries was common. Furthermore, the surveyors general, acting with local politicians, continued to press for augmented funds each year, being interested only in contracts and the patronage they could dispense. As a result, numerous surveys had been made, as in the Mohave Desert, where dividing the land into quarter-sections was quite useless and a sheer waste of money.61 Not all the fault in surveying resulted from the political character of the surveyors general and the staff they recruited; it was partly owing to the low price the government was willing to pay, especially in a rough and mountainous region like much of California. In such areas the $6 per mile was inadequate to tempt anyone to do an honest job, said a former United States surveyor. Williamson had the courage to recommend the abolition of the 61 The Public Land Commission brought out much information in its interviews with registers and receivers of land offices, landlookers and agents, miners, lumbermen and others in 1880, concerning the inadequacies of the surveying system. "Report of the Land Commission, H. Ex. Doc, 46th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 22, No. 46 (Serial No. 1923), pp. 48, 65, 100-101, 162, 669-73; GLO Report, 1880, p. 31. |