Hi Napier, sorry I got delayed in my response. Damn work interfering and all that…
As you are listed as being from the Mid-Atlantic States area, this actually may not apply to you, but I’ll carry on in hope that some of this is applicable. In 1785 Congress enacted the Land Ordnance Act. This was the start of the Public Land Survey System used to identify and categorize the lands west of Appalachia that were being stripped from the natives and given to European settlers. Some of the links below show maps of where the PLSS applied. It was too late to implement in the eastern seaboard states as those areas had already started describing properties using the meets and bounds methods (“Go this direction so far, that direction this distance, etc. until you get back to the beginning.”) So basically government surveyors went out and set monuments (originally a stone with an X chiseled into it) every mile in a grid pattern.
Given the difficulty of the task and equipment of the time (in Minnesota it was mostly done in the mid to late-1800s) the original monument locations take precedence over where they “should” be. The square grid is not exactly square and 5280.0’ on a side. In fact, in northern Minnesota where the iron ore affected the surveyor’s compasses, the sections are definitely loopy, more like parallelograms (or other 4 sided shapes I can’t remember the names of). I’ve read some diary excerpts of what the government surveyors went through. It was very tough work. Establishing the section lines is line-of-sight work. In wooded areas, which described a lot of America back in those days, this involved a lot of cutting of trees and brush. The description of dealing with mosquitoes and black flies drove me crazy when reading it. ::scratches while thinking of it again::
Anyway, these sections form the basis of property description. One square mile contains 640 acres. 640 is a number that can be fractionalized in a bunch of ways. If you break the section into quarter sections ½ mile on a side, they are 160 acres each. With a further quartering you get a square ¼ mile on a side and 40 acres in size. This handy area (from a farm field division standpoint) is where the “north forty” phrase comes from that was the subject of a recent thread. Granted, the actual dimension based on accurate measurements and calculations of the original monument locations may give you a size of 39.46 acres or 42.15 acres, but it is close enough for a rough description. The whole fractional portion of the section is used in descriptions as well. You may describe a parcel as the NW¼ of the SW¼, or the N½ of the SE¼, or the North 280.0’ of the NE¼. This makes it easy to describe land when transferring it for farming, timber sales or other large transactions. It doesn’t work that well for individual town-sized lots of a few acres or smaller.
If your area is on a section grid, you can check with a local agency as NinetyWt suggested – public works, county surveyor, local planning and see if they have information on you area. Oftentimes there is a “Section breakdown” which gives accurate distances of the ¼ mile± lines within the section and also internal angles.
Shots on the ground are termed elevations rather than altitudes. The surveyors may have taken an elevation at the nail they placed in the road, or there may be an established Bench Mark with a known elevation nearby. Hopefully whomever you talk with can help. Bench Marks may be a brass disk firmly set in the ground for that purpose, or a “temporary bench mark” set on the top nut of a hydrant or a big nail pounded into a power pole. With more and more high-accuracy GPS being used, I’m seeing a lot of Bench Marks not being maintained, although there is discussion on the wisdom of this.
Here are a couple of web sites that give a bit more background on the whole Section business.
Link1
Link 2
A difficulty with using this one point to check any property information is that you usually need a second known point to check into. Then the equipment and knowledge necessary isn’t that accessible to the do-it-yourself gang. However, if the area is well identified by section and hopefully quarter-section markers, it may be cheaper for a hired surveyor to check your property if you want to go that route.
And a few asides to others –
Dewey Finn – I’m really not sure. I think they are held in place by wooden stakes or big nails, but that is more for the wind. It really wouldn’t help against intentional mischief. When had some aerial photography done, it wasn’t that heavily traveled an area and we did it just a day or two before the flight.
Bosda – You work in aerial photography? Maybe I read that before and forgot, but you keep getting cooler IMHO (what with Pewaukee and now this). Oh, and please trout-whack Patty once for me.
And Quadgop - 
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