The herald., 1896-10-12
"A JUMB|E OF LAND TITLES
A Decision by Judge Shaw
Disturbs Owners
TIE BOUNDARY LINES EN1ANqED
All the Principal City Streets
are Involved
THE WARNING GIVEN IN 1869
The City Council and City Engineers
Imbecile Methods
Street Lines Drawn to Preserve the Sym.
metry Ignoring owners Rights
THE WARNING GIVEN IN 1856!
The City council and City Engineer'i
Imbecile Methods
Street Lines Drawn to Preserve the Sym
metry Ignoring Owners Rights
The Din1culty First Arose When Own
ers INDUCED in Land Grabbing by
Moving the Stakes of Survey.
Not Re-established


A number Of property owners in the
city are suffering from that peculiar
mental disturbance known popularity as
a "conniption fit," and If still greater
number are not present victims it IS
only because they do not yet know how
their interests are threatened.
The reason for all the trouble is that
an immense number of property owners,
resting content with their deeds of title,
are in reality encroaching on city prop
erty, and any day they are liable to be
brought to task and mulcted in large
sums of money. AS matter of fact the
city surveys are in such condition as
to drive an ordinary engineer or sur
veyor crazy, and the matter has been
still further complicated by recent de-
cision of the superior court.
In the suit of Mary A. Mooney VS.. w.
E. Morford, street superintendent in
1889, ct al, a suit that has been hanging
fire for long years, Judge Shaw the other
day handed down decision wherein he
laid down as proposition of law that
streets laid out upon the official maps
belong to the public and that the stat
municipality; and this, too, notwith-
standing the fact that other decisions
of court affirm to the contrary.
The trouble anent the laying out of
the city is no new one, but owing to the
action-or to be more precise, the in
action-of the city engineers, fool sur
veyors and the city council, not one
property holder in hundred is actually
in the possession of the property de-
scribed in his title deeds Not infre-
quently If an owner was in possession
of the right lot the city officials pro-
ceeded, when 1t served their conven-
ience, to move his lot lines without pro-
cess of law other than the sweet will
of the then jack-in office. Searchers Of
records, with frigid GOODNESS, certify to
a title being free and unincumbered
when comparison with the city maps
of streets show that the very lots GER
titled to fail to reach the street or, on
the other hand, encroach within the
street lines as defined by the city engi
neerS.
Slowed away in the city archives is
a communication addressed by Frank
Lecouvreur, surveyor in this city in
1869, to the mayor and city council
wherein he warns them of the daily in
creasing complications arising from the
utter absence of system in the city sur
veyS. He warned them also of dangers
ahead and of the friction that must
necessarily result between the property
owners and the city as the population
increased. Now, after the surveys have
been entangled like a Chinese puzzle,
property owners who have been de-
frauded of slices of their property have
to rest content in the thought that they
will have no redress for" statute of
limitations will not~run against a mu-
nicipality;" but. on the other hand,
when the city proved the loser the prop
ertV holder must ante IN
IN THE EARLY~DAYS
Before adverting further to things as
they are, brief reference is made to
things as they were in 1869. Surveyor
Lecouvreur. in the communication re-
ferred to. says Il was requested to
locate a certain street corner on Twelfth
street. did so by starting from an old
corner on Fifth street and measuring at
right angle offsets, allowing eighty feet
and $50 feet for streets and blocks east
and west and sixty and 600 feet for
streets and blocks north and
south" On my present survey of
Main street I took occasion to again
connect the starting and end point Of
my previous survey, but came not less
than eleven feet to the southwest of
my previous location of Twelfth street.
On both surveys did the claiming my
self and used the same instrument
1.-The question arises, which is the cor
rect location of Twelfth street? &.
AS it is, resurveying lots of Ords and
Hancock's surveys Is little better than
a genteel way of getting money under
false pretenses. without much gentility
about it either, when the surveyor pre-
tends to be able to fix lines and limi.s
finally and permanently, for he must
we'll konw that as soon as he starts from
a different point he will get different
location
When those words were written what
is now the city of Los Angeles was a
mere village, comparatively speaking
The dangers and difficulties then fore
told are upon the city through the cul-
pable negligence of the city officials
AS some slight proof of this, there were
last year no less than 230 suits in this
county, and the larger number in the
city, in the courts appertaining to the
surveys.
The inquiry naturally suggests itself
How does such state of things arise? /?
1t has been commonly the case for
property owners to file maps showing
streets and blocks Of certain sizes, pur-
porting to be a subdivision of certain
lots and blocks of the original survey.
A tract of land was staked out as near
as the surveyor could guess regarding
the true boundaries. If he was a good
guesser he would come anywhere from
few feet to several hundred feet of
that original lot or block but more often
the tract was StdKed out on the ground
by survey to all points of the COM
pass. The controlling monuments Of
these surveys We're stakes. and when
man bought 50-foot lot all he had to do
was to pull upthe stake and at once his
lot was enlarged to 60 feet. 1t was as
easy as falling off log. There was no
difficulty in thus stealing land from
ones neighbor or the city, stealing i'm
partially from an.
THE FAMILY HOMESTEAD UNDE-
FINED.
Any subsequent survey was based
upon the monument stakes, no trouble
being taken to re-establish the original
tract, and as natural consequence
there Is today tangle up of titles suffi-
cient to make the ordinary head swim.
If this should be doubted. let any pater
familias rejoicing under his own fig tree
and happy In the thought that his lot
boundaries are well defined, go to the
record and get the size of the original
block and then measure the present one,
and he will probably find that he will
have at least four locations Of his lot
If ha measures its distance from the