OC0811: C 9 (USC&GS/NGS, Boscawen, NH) - U.S. Benchmarks on Waymarking.com

This station is a US Coast & Geodetic Survey standard bench mark disk, in the village of Gerrish, located in northern Boscawen, NH, just south of the town of Franklin. It is set in a culvert headwall down slope from an abandoned railroad bed and just above the Merrimack River. The train station is still standing, although it is vacant and closed up. This rail was the former Northern branch of the Concord division of the Boston & Maine Railroad. Service through here has been discontinued several years ago, and the rails and ties have been taken up. The state has claimed ownership of the remaining right-of-way, which has since been converted to a recreational trail, this one being the Northern Rail Trail. The NHDOT datasheet description is more up-to-date than the NGS datasheet, although I disagree with the coordinates from both datasheets. (Note 02/2011: New NGS datasheet for OC0811 has been released with 12/2010 recovery notes including coordinates and description locals)

Gerrish station is located about 1.3 mi. south on U.S. Route 3 from the Franklin/Boscawen town line, on the left side of the road. It can also be reached from the north junction of U.S. Routes 3 and 4 in Boscawen (at the church); go north on U.S. Route 3 for about 3.4 mi. to the train station which will be on the right.
From the train station, pack south on the rail trail ( ~450 ft.) to a dirt road crossing, thence an additional ~1000 ft. south on the trail to the mark/station on the left. The mark, set in a culvert headwall, is located down a steep embankment, 12 ft. below the trail surface, 32 ft. east of the center of the trail, and a few feet uphill from the west shoreline of the Merrimack River. An orange colored Carsonite post, labeled AT&T #170, is ~75 ft. northwest of the mark. The County Jail building is ~500 ft. uphill and west of this site.
As mentioned above, the mark/station is down a steep slope, which has been grown up with saplings and bushes that may make the approach to the mark difficult, and foliage may make sighting of the mark, at least from trail level, next to impossible in the summertime.

Worth noting is how far off the older published scaled coordinates were for this mark. Using Google Maps, N43d 21' 59" x W071d 39' 1" has me near a culvert north of the train station, not south. That was NGS, but the NHDOT was not much better, oddly enough: at N43d 21' 59" x W071d 39' 3" got me in the center of U.S. 3, almost in the same general area as the NGS coords. When I plugged in my new coords, the arrow dropped right in the spot where the mark actually is. All in all, we're looking at a 2000+ft. difference between old and new, and a clear example of how 'off' scaled coords can be. NGS couldn't find this mark since it was set in 1933, could it be possible that they were searching the wrong culvert all along? To add to the confusion is the fact that there is a USGS mark set just paces somewhere north of the train station, in the general area in question. It appears on historic USGS topographic maps as BM X 279. It's a 1925 K-series USGS bench mark, but bear in mind, it isn't OC0811. Fortunately, the NHDOT description helped get me where I was supposed to be looking!

Also worth noting is that the general area appears to be state-owned land, with various facilities such as the UNH Cooperative Extension, a county nursing home, a state nursery, and the minimum security county jail. There are signs along the road advising motorists not to pick up hitch hikers, for obvious reasons. No problems that I could see, I just stayed on the trail and stayed focused on finding locals and the station mark.

Condition: Mark found in good condition Designation: C 9 1933 Benchmark Agency: U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey Monumentation type: BENCH MARK (or B.M.) Disk County: Merrimack USGS 7.5' Topographic Quadrangle Name (optional): Webster Find type: Coordinates and/or to-reach information from an online local database were used Web address of this benchmark's datasheet (optional): [Web Link] NGS PID: OC0811 Local database's URL (optional): [Web Link] Benchmark Agency (if other): Not listed Monumentation type (if other): Not listed Special category (optional): Not listed Special Category (if other): Not listed

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.