WYALUSING

We expected this to be an easy find (assuming it were still in place) because we had adjusted coordinates for the station, and all three marks should have been very close to the road. Little did we know we’d come across one of the strangest tri-station situations ever!

After spending some time exploring Wyalusing Rocks on this sunny Friday, we backtracked just a bit and made our way along Homets Heights Road to the coordinates for WYALUSING. The coordinates took us just to the edge of a field lined with high grass and weeds. We checked carefully but saw nothing obvious. Our initial assumption was that the monument was buried.

Our next step was to look for the reference marks. We found RM 1 just about where we expected to, based on the handheld coordinates from the datasheet. But what’s this next to RM 1?! Another concrete monument is just a few inches away. The disk on top is the station disk. The monument obviously was moved and then re-embedded in the ground. Bizarre!

And what’s even more bizarre is that it took us a minute to realize that there is a third monument (RM 2) right in line with RM 1 and the station! All three monuments are within inches of one another. The only one that might still be in its proper place is RM 1, although we can’t be sure. The distances given in the box score make it clear that the station and RM 2 have been moved.

There is a house on the property, but it didn’t look like anyone was home. We knocked on the door anyway, and after a minute a sleepy-looking elderly man appeared. He was friendly but didn’t know anything about the history of the marks, or when or why they might have been moved. He had noticed them, but assumed that they were all part of one piece of concrete.