Re: Uintah #30

Would that be engineers' chains -- as in railroad alignment engineers -- or land surveyors' chains?

American railroad surveyors used 100' long chains which would be one reason that railroad location survey stations are every 100 feet. Land Surveyors used 66' long chains -- that goes back to England in 1640 when Edmund Gunter introduced the measuring device to help determine acreage.

66' feet sounds odd, but it makes land measuring easy. 80 chains make a mile. 10 square chains (1x10, 2x5, etc.) equals a acre of land. 10 chains measure a furlong (as in horse racing) which is also 1/8 mile. [At work the 1906 deed for one of our well sites is written in Chains and the chains to the 100th decimal.] I read on Wikipedia that some minor roads in New Zealand (and Australia) were laid out with a 66' width.

Of course, it you want an even more arcane, we can measure some shorter distances using a Rod. A Rod is 16.5 feet long. Two Rods equal 33' feet and four Rods make a Chain. At work, I've just been looking at some old easements from a predecessor water company -- some from the early 1890s were stated to be 8 foot wide and others as being one Rod wide.

Brian Norden