G 727

We were unable to find G 727 based on the information we had at the time, but once we returned home and looked at the USGS topo map, it seems we may have been looking in the wrong spot. The NGS description (and coordinates) place this mark east of Cottonwood Springs Road, but we searched quite thoroughly and couldn’t find anything. The mark is described as being only 32.5 feet east of the centerline of the road, which is very close to the edge of the road; we’ve encountered many situations where road or shoulder widening has caused the destruction of marks so close to the road. There is also a parking pulloff in this area that, we hypothesized at the time, might also have covered the mark.

What we didn’t realize that day was that the USGS topo map shows the mark on the west side of the road, where we didn’t search at all. A simple error in the NGS description might account for all of our difficulties in finding this mark. When we return, we’ll search on the west side of the road in this area, and I suspect we’ll find the mark.