Here We Go Perambulatin'

Per State Statute 51 each and every community in New Hampshire is required to walk its boundary with its neighbors and identify the boundary markers it shares with its neighbors once every seven (7) years. 2010 is one of those years. I am getting ready to take this task on.

Surprised that we know where the boundary markers are? Me to. Some of course, we know where they should be (middle of Weeks Crossing for instance) others we know exactly (big boulder at the end of Cook Road). The process should be interesting and entertaining to undertake.

So far, the interesting portion has been trying to coordinate with other communities. I began reaching out in August. Some places responded right away (Barrington wanted to get right on it), others not so fast (name withheld to protect long term relationships). Some people I spoke with had no clue that this was a process we all have to undertake, some saw it as a way to tinker here and there with the lines.

Perambulation is an interesting idea to me because the goal is to know your boundaries. I wonder if after 375 years the common line with another community will move? In reality the common lines have been drafted and redrafted to degrees. Looking at the original grants of land, Dover included Durham, Somersworth, Rollinsford, Madbury and who knows what else. Over time those areas pulled away and became their own entity.

I have a guidebook from 1982 with basic tie lines documenting where a stone with a D on one side and an M on the other might be located for the Dover/Madbury bound. The book also indicates if the bound was found then. I am hoping to not only replicate the book, but modernize it. Make it more visual, by way of taking pictures of the bounds we find, and by using the City's Global Positioning System (GPS) I hope that we can document where the spot is located on the earth. Certainly such tools were not in existence for the better part of Dover's history and who knows how the boundaries were laid out. That said, I saw a documentary recently on the Mason/Dixon line (I know... I'm cool, huh), and how the written description of where it is only deviates from the actual GPS locations of the bounds by like fifty (50) feet over the full length of the Pennsylvania and Maryland border.

I doubt we will skew that much, but will let you know. I hope to have the project complete next week or the week after. It all depends on schedules (each community must be present for the boundary review), and satellites (using the GPS is a whole science in itself).

More to come....