Feature: Riding the Wild West
Professional Surveyor Magazine -
July 2009
In the eastern region of Oregon, the air shows no sign of any moisture in it, giving it a certain crispness. Or maybe it is just the dried grass, shrubs, and other vegetation crunching under our feet as we walk. This is a typical July, August, and September day on the ranges here, where fires can start seemingly from a hot breeze. Known around these parts as "fire season," this is a time to be mindful of how you go about your work outdoors, especially in the sagebrush-covered hills and mountain ranges.
As surveyors, we work hand in hand with the
Bureau of Land Management to ensure safe work practices so we do not endanger the area we work in. This can mean much more walking to complete a job due to the hazards of driving any sort of motorized vehicle across the terrain. Even with modern robotic instruments and GPS units, this can add many hours to a project. No more driving from point to point breaking down a section, not to mention having to extend the search from section to section because corners no longer exist. Yes, this means much more work during the fire season.
My brother Lance King and I, along with Dan Cummings, own an engineering/surveying firm established in 1972 in Ontario, Oregon, operating under the name of
CK3, LLC and serving eastern Oregon and western Idaho. The name K-3 was originally a cattle brand and dates back to the 1940s. The King family settled in Unity, Oregon and started a ranching business and established the brand. Over the years of ranching, the brand was passed along in the family. The current King boys did not continue in the ranching business and choose land surveying instead. When it came time to establish a name for their business, it seemed fitting to use K-3 in the name, and the old King cattle brand lives on.
This story begins with a project we acquired northwest of Juntura, Oregon. Dry conditions prevailed at a mine site called Kelley Field, operated by a firm named
Eagle Picher. This company has been mining diatomaceous earth here since the early 1980s.
The rugged mountains are covered with jagged rocks, juniper trees, and a few patches of pines that must have been carried in by the winds or birds many moons ago, as this is not your typical pine landscape. Many refer to this portion of eastern Oregon as High Desert County. We have performed work on this mine since it began, including doing the original survey to open it. This particular project was for a record of survey that consumed several sections. Like many of the other projects for this mine, it would require extensive cross-county traveling to search for controlling corners required to complete this project, as this area, like many of the mountain ranges here, had not been surveyed for over a hundred years.
We would be retracing a surveyor named J. Meldrum who originally surveyed this area in 1875, and, at the time of his survey, the land was just as rough and vast as today with many dangers. According to his notes, the occasional run-in with hostile Native Americans was never a pleasant moment, and all measures were taken to steer clear from those situations. Needless to say, we were not up against hostile Native Americans, but other hazards are the same now as they were then and possibly worse if care is not taken to insure that operating modern equipment doesn't start fires or otherwise harm the natural landscape.
Make the Decision to Go Retro
After doing our research, we decided to use our four-wheelers and a Kawasaki Mule for areas close to the mining operations, because there are safe access roads, safety equipment, and access to water for any emergency that might arise there. For the rest, we were going to need some other form of transportation due to the time of year because motorized vehicles are prohibited off road during fire season. We have always tried to tread lightly across the landscape even in low fire seasons, doing our part to protect our natural environment. So the question became how to complete this project in the most time-efficient way without having to walk the whole project in 100-plus degree weather, again adding many hours or days to the project.
We decided we needed to go back in time and combine the new with the old and use horses, the main mode of transportation back when this county was originally surveyed. This isn't new to surveying or any work in this type of country, but it would pose a challenge in finding a way to carry modern survey equipment in a safe and efficient manner.
We build our own rod holders for our survey equipment to use on our trucks, four-wheelers, and Kawasaki Mule, but to build a rod holder to go on a saddle for a horse was another thing. It would take a little creativity. My brother Lance relishes this type of challenge, so he went to work building a rod holder for his horse to keep the GPS unit in constant fixed mode. This would allow saving time by not having to re-set up every time we needed to look for or tie out a corner.
Lance fabricates all our rod holders in his shop at home, performing all the welding, cutting, and pre-fitting along with tests to insure they will properly support the expensive equipment. On this particular application, a 2"-diameter galvanized pipe approximately 4" long was welded to a flat plate formed to enclose the bottom of the pipe, leaving a 2"x 5" lip off the end of the steel plate to attach to the bottom of the foot stirrup with two bolts. The base of the rod holder is similar to a flagpole holder you might see at a rodeo when the cowgirl riding her horse buzzes the arena with the American flag for the national anthem. The pipe is also attached with a strap to the bottom cinch for extra stability and to keep the top-heavy unit upright. The upper portion of the unit is supported in the leather strap that would normally be used to carry a lariat.
Lance and I both own our horses. We grew up riding horses in 4-H, cattle drives, and rodeos and for hunting and pleasure, so we have been around this lifestyle our entire lives. We both live in rural areas where we keep our horses and have the opportunities to ride them whenever we like. We use our horses regularly for pleasure riding, gathering cattle, camping, and hunting. Lance's sorrel (chestnut-colored) gelding is a quarter horse named Hercules. Also a gelding, my horse Buck is a buckskin-colored paint.
Growing up, Lance and I both were accustomed to traveling around pulling all sorts for trailers just about anywhere. We have both transported horses and cattle all over, so this is really nothing new to us. For this job, we used Lance's two-horse slant trailer. Of course, we use our survey truck for any job because it is equipped with all the materials we might need for surveying. All our survey trucks have a receiver hitch for toting a trailer, typically for hauling the Honda four-wheeler or the Kawasaki Mule. In our first time doing this, it would now haul the horses two hours to the job.
Set up the Base Unit
Buck had only been green broken, so I had no intention of packing any of our equipment that was worth much on my horse. But Hercules is well broken, so he would carry the GPS and any other valued items. Our first task was getting everything packed on the horses to set up the base unit, which we picked to be at the top of the biggest mountain in our area. Our radio signal could reach as far as possible in hopes of saving time not having to move the base station to cover our search area. We packed our horses with the equipment and headed to the top of the mountain. This proved a good test to see how the horses would react to carrying our equipment; as for this portion of the project, we could keep the equipment packed in their carrying cases for protection. The animals behaved well, and this portion of the job went well and was very enjoyable, not having to carry all this equipment by hand and walking up the mountain.
After returning to the truck, we proceeded to get the remaining equipment ready for the next portion of our mission. We got the rover unit set up, and while Lance attached it to his horse using the rod holder he had designed for his saddle, I packed the rebar for corners we would need in a gun scabbard and the caps, hammer, and water in our saddle bags.
We had a long day ahead of us, and by now, things were heating up, but we were ready and headed out to search for our first corner of the day. In this particular section, the original surveyor had set all the interior and exterior corners as 1/16, not the norm for late 1800s surveys or this type of country, but he was instructed to do so. Since most of this county had not been disturbed much by man, other than ranchers running cattle and constructing drift fences, we found many of the 1/16 and 1/4 corners and some section corners, most being scribed very well in stones. But as with many sections, we did end up having to ride beyond our sections looking for other corners due to not finding all the corners we needed to complete the breakdowns. This first day went well, as the rod holder worked great and we could cover a lot of country and find many corners in a days' time due to traveling by horse and keeping the unit running.
We were about done and as far from the truck as we had been all day when my horse decided to get a little ornery. He jumped forward a bit, and the rebar I had left over in my scabbard rattled, which caused him to really blow up. It was all I could do to stay on, and I thought at one moment I was coming off. The hammer, caps, and water were all flying out of the saddle
bags, and I lost my hat after Buck hit me in the head with his head and knocked it off.
After everything settled down and I threatened to kill my brother if he didn't quit rolling in the dirt laughing, we packed everything we could find and decided to head back to the truck. The day had gone rather well, and the wild action of a horse blowing up just made it that much more fun and interesting. After arriving back at the truck, there was one last task to perform: another trip up the mountain to pick up the base station. Then we headed the 80 miles back to town for the night.
This was not the most efficient way to get the job done, but in fire season it is definitely the safest. It's faster than walking, and it showed us that when needed, the old-fashioned way of getting things done can also be the best way, besides being fun.
Chase King is co-owner of CK3, a surveying and engineering firm in Ontario, Oregon.
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