WGS SURVEY CONTROL RECORDS ARCHIVE

ABOUT THIS ARCHIVE

This is a static archive of the remaining survey control reports that were formerly hosted in the WGS Survey Control Warehouse (Aka. ‘GSOW’), as of the date that the control warehouse was archived on July 1st, 2020.

The records are PDF copies of reports generated from the legacy WGS control warehouse and are presented “as is”. The Washington Geodetic Survey, the Washington Council of County Surveyors, and any agency, individual, or company listed on any records in this archive ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACCURACY, CURRENCY, OR COMPLETENESS OF THIS INFORMATION. For additional information, contact the database steward of the specific record. Any coordinates listed are for general location purposes only and do NOT imply any accuracy or specificity of the monument location.

These reports are the legacy of a long series of control warehouse efforts, beginning in 1996 with the development of a generic control record report for MS Access that was adopted by many counties, cities, and agencies to document their own survey control with a standard report for internal uses and/or public access.

Soon after, the Washington Council of County Surveyors sponsored a web map interface that accessed multiple databases of the various entities the used generic control record template. This was known as the ‘WCCS Survey Control Warehouse’. The web map interface was upgraded several times, with the most recent iteration sponsored by the non-profit Washington Geodetic Survey, with the web map interface known as ‘GSOW’.

In recent years, many of the participating entities have chosen to withdraw as they did not want obsolete reports circulating, and many do not have budget to keep all records up to date.  The conventional wisdom on keeping control databases has changed somewhat. With the advent of high-precision GNSS, reliance on legacy control records has not been a priority for certain entities. And with the best practice of independent verification of any control and records used, legacy databases were viewed by some participating entities as being of questionable value, other than helping someone find an old mark. Many participating entities view the obsolete coordinates as being of no value beyond temporal comparison or coarse mark searches.

As the latest web map interface is also facing obsolescence, the WGS decided not to redesign, but to decommission the interactive database and preserve the old records as a static archive. The records were archived on July 1st, 2020, and the legacy web interface decommissioned on August 1st, 2020.

Via the links below to Dropbox folders, you can download any, or all, of the individual reports, and several spatial format index files.

If you are seeking updated control records you will need to contact various cities, counties, and agencies directly.   Example: City of Seattle: Christopher.Royak@Seattle.Gov, Survey Manager

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NOTE: City of Seattle Vertical control is now online at: City of Seattle Vertical Control.

“With SPU’s new Vertical Control Monument Viewer, you can search for and review information about the City of Seattle's survey monuments within the City and its service areas. This application includes vertical control details associated with each monument, as well as an option to produce a PDF summary report for a selected monument.  This external-facing viewer is available to the public in both map and text form (the latter for accessibility purposes), and its data is updated regularly by the SPU Survey team.” - Chris Royak, February 1, 2021

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