PLSO The Oregon Surveor September/October 2021

13 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Featured Article Editor’s Note: This is a Wikipedia article that R. Charles (Chuck) Pearson, PLS brought to the issue. He says he has always been interested in history and was a history major at Portland State University. Several years ago, he was at a Western Federation of Professional Surveyors Board of Directors meeting and one of the mem- bers discussed the conflict in the location of the angle point in the middle of Lake Tahoe between California and Nevada. At that time (probably in the 1990s) the Benson Syndicate was discussed and Pearson researched it. Recently, he went back to find the material for the NACS newsletter and thought that it might also be of interest to Oregon surveyors. T he Benson Syndicate was an or- ganized crime organization in the western United States which received contracts from the General Land Office (GLO) to perform land surveys of the public lands. It was led by, and named after, one John A Benson (1845–1910), a former school teacher, county surveyor and later a reputable deputy surveyor, mineral surveyor, and civil engineer. The syndicate operated from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, but was most ac - tive in California and was headquartered in San Francisco. Its tenure ran fromabout 1875 to 1898 and was at its peak from 1883 to 1886. In California alone, at least 40 individuals were known to be involved, and very probably more actually were. Its modus operandi was to generate false de- mand for public land surveys (see Public Land Survey System) using fictitious land patent applications, followed by contract- ing with the GLO for the survey of these lands. The surveys were then fraudulently executed, being either shoddy, incom- plete, or outright fictitious. These “surveys” were “performed” under contract to indi- vidual deputy surveyors, some of whom were not even aware that the surveying contracts existed in their names, having been induced by Benson to sign blank papers which were later turned into con- tracts and other legal documents without their knowledge. At other times, people with minimal—or evenno—surveying experience and/or lack - ingproperqualificationsasdeputysurveyors, performed the work without the contract- ed surveyor ever being physically present, which was patently illegal. Often, an area under contract was surveyed only to the extent that was necessary to create plau- sible, but fabricated, survey plats and field notes for the remainder of the area. Oth- er times, entire contracted areas, usually consisting of several survey townships (36 square miles), were fabricated by syndi- cate members at the San Francisco office, with little or no work on the ground at all. Extent of operation Benson’s organization infiltrated into very high levels of the government, and syndi- cate members in governmental positions as well as members of congress made the group’s schemes possible. For example, in California at least two Surveyors General in the 1880s approved numerous fraudu- lent survey results and approved requests for government payment that were 200 to 700 percent of the originally estimated survey cost, which the government paid. Theodore Wagner was especially notori- ous in this regard, and his appointment as California Surveyor General coincided with a large increase in the group’s activi - ties and power. Others approved contracts that had originally been rejected (after inspection by independent government examiners), without evidence or assur- ance that the surveys had been properly corrected or completed. Also, at least one such examiner in Californiawas part of the syndicate, attempting to gain payment for some rejected surveys via bogus field “ex - aminations” (which were themselves later rejected as fraudulent as the extent of the group’s activities became known). Banks were also involved, providing the deposits and performance bonds required by the government, in exchange for a cut of the enormous profits generated. These banks later also paid for the syndicate’s defense attorneys in trials brought by the govern- ment in its failed, ten-year effort to convict the syndicatemembers and recover funds paid for fraudulent work. Reports of the Commissioner of the General Land Office 1887 Detailed information on the Syndicate’s history remains fairly sparse. Two Annu- al Reports of the Commissioner of the General Land Office provide a glimpse of the group’s activities. The Report for 1887, pages 25–26, gives this summary of their schemes: “In April last the United States grand jury at San Francisco returned forty one indictments for perjury and conspiracy in connection with fraudulent surveys of the public lands. The op- erations of this syndicate were not confined to California, but extended to the states of Nevada, Oregon and Colorado, and the Terri- tories of Arizona, NewMexico, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Washington. Its purpose was to control all surveying contracts in these States and Territories under the deposit system, to manufacture settlers’ applications for surveys, to file in the offices of the surveyors-general fictitious field notes of surveys and alleged surveys, and to draw from the Treasury of Its modus operandi was to generate false demand for public land surveys using fictitious land patent applications, followed by contracting with the GLO for the survey of these lands. John A Benson continues T