The Mystery of the Vanished Port Angeles Surveyor
A government townsite project stalls as the surveyor disappears, leaving the Interior Department scrambling to find his missing field notes.
The interior department is in something of a pickle over the failure to secure the field notes of the surveyor who made the survey of the Port Angeles, Wash., townsite. Upon the urgent request of Senator Allen, the commissioner of the general land office sent to Surveyor-General Shaw at Olympia today a vigorous telegram insisting that the field notes of the man who made the survey be forwarded to the department at once. The name of the surveyor is Ashley, and he was a resident of Spokane when the department awarded him the survey. The notes, according to the statement the general land commissioner made to Senator Allen today, should have reached the department months ago. It seems that the department is not only unable to get the notes, but, at the present time, has no information as to Ashley's whereabouts. The matter is important and the land department will leave no stone unturned to get some trace of Ashley, and will also see that the field notes are forthcoming.
“The interior department is in something of a pickle over the failure to secure the field notes.”
This 1892 bureaucratic headache highlights the chaos of the territorial land-grab era, where the simple act of surveying a townsite could be derailed by a single missing person. It reminds us that behind modern land titles often lies a messy, half-forgotten history of missing records and lost surveyors.
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