Buzz's Initial Point Geocoin

To be discovered by everyone that what to see the Initial Point in Buzz's collection

In 1854 the Kansas Nebraska act was passed, setting forth a system for the settlement of the plains states. Up until that time, everything west of Missouri was open territory, no land owners, no laws, nothing remotely resembling civilization. The 40th N. Latitude was selected as the baseline boundary between the Kansas and Nebraska Territory. Before the plains could be settled, a survey system needed to be set up. Charles A. Manners set forth to survey this line, that we now know as the Kansas Nebraska border. He surveyed across the Missouri River into what is now the north east corner of Kansas and set a 640 pound cast iron marker on a bluff, overlooking the Missouri River. That marker is known as the Point of Origin or Point of Beginning. Manners surveyed west 108 miles along the 40th N. Latitude in 1855 and 1856. The survey team came and went, conditions were very harsh in an inhospitable prairie. They had several skirmishes with the Native Americans. Manners had to be an incredibly dedicated individual to take on this project and complete it like he did. When they reached the 6th Principle Meridian, he buried a non-native red sand stone in the center of a wagon wheel. That red sand stone marked the Initial Point for the survey of Kansas, Nebraska, Parts of S. Dakota, Colorado and Wyoming. All land ownership records throughout the system refer to the Initial Point, a red sand stone buried in 1856. The system of townships, roads, and ranges throughout these states was surveyed off of this rock. The collective surveyor's associations from these five states decided to try to recover the original red sand stone. They found it exactly where it should be, only it was in the middle of a two lane dirt road with very little gravel. They recovered it on June 11, 1987....131 years to the day after it had been set. After recovering the Initial point, they set in a manhole tube and paved about 60 feet of the road to keep the tube from being destroyed by traffic on the roadway. They designed the manhole cover that I used for the face of the coin to cap the tube. The cover includes Nebraska on the north, Kansas on the south, 6 P. M. for the 6th Principle Meridian and 40th N. Lat for the obvious. There are some oddities that we incorporated into the coin. Instead of using a W letter for west, they used an upside down M letter. The side of the cover has an indent to pry the cover out of the tube and an alignment hole. We also incorporated those into the coin. Those of you that like to attach a travel bug tag to your coins, this one has a hole in it you can use for that. The BLM set a benchmark in the historic rock. One would think that a rock that had served for over 100 years as a benchmark would be good enough. The BLM saw other wise and set a marker. They used the number 1 for the letter I and misspelled Initial, it is INITAL in the benchmark. They also center punched the benchmark twice, obviously missing the mark once. The benchmark is listed as a cadastral survey marker. I thought they had a spelling error. When I looked up Cadastral, I found the following definition: "a survey relating to land boundaries and subdivisions, which is made to create units suitable for the transfer of or to define the limitations of a title; surveys of the public lands of the US, including retracement surveys for the identification of and resurveys for the restoration of property lines; and for corresponding surveys outside the public lands, although such surveys are usually termed land surveys"