PLSO The Oregon Surveyor Sept/Oct 2020

10 Vol. 43, No. 5 The Oregon Surveyor  | Featured Article wedding reception when, on the fourth pass of the shovel, a discolored splotch appears. Mike’s next passes of the shov- el reveal a square hole around the rotted wood remains of the original 1910 wood- en stake set as the lot corner. Like all new wet-behind-the-ears students of the pro- fession I had heard stories about finding stone or wood GLO corners, but subdi- vision lot corners? Weren’t they all rebar or nonexistent? This was a delightful epiphany and forever changed how I search for corners in old plats. At the time that Mike Pulzone excavated that 1910 corner, I wondered if this was common monumentation in early 1900s plats, or just in this plat. As I gained more experience, I found proof that these old plats had been monumented, despite no information about lot/block monumen- tation being stated on the plats. Most of this proof was from the record surveys of a local Bend surveyor. John Eaton’s Gift to Future Surveyors John H. Eaton (1907–1994) was licensed as Oregon PLS 252 in May 1949 and PE 3150 in 1951. Between 1949 and 1986 he filed more than 1,300 surveys in De - schutes County. A great deal of his work was retracing lots in the old plats of Bend. Many of his surveys can be somewhat perplexing in that his methodology for retracing boundaries is not always clear. continued from previous page T Photo 2: 1904 Laidlaw plat with 1952 US Highway 20 location cutting diagonally through plat. Photo 3: 1994 aerial image of aggregate operation and Deschutes County ownership.