Re: RGS - Ridgway

Ah! Much better.

So I wasted some more time futzing around with Jimmy Blouch's map and Google Earth. I didn't try to mess with the east-west alignment since the overlay shows we are pretty close. I tried to see where things were with regard to Hyde Street. First I squared up Jimmy's map, then I extended the plat lines on either side of Hyde Street. According to the map, Hyde would sit between lines 66 ft. apart. The lines show that the turntable would not be centered on Hyde if Hyde is centered between the property lines. It would be south of the center.


Then I went to Google Earth and started measuring. Only one piece of Hyde is hard surface and that is the intersection of Hyde and Lena. I assume somebody surveyed that intersection before building it, so let's assume it is centered on the 66 ft. wide space. I measured modern Hyde as 30 ft. wide curb-to-curb. I added 18 ft. to each side and drew the 66 ft. lines due east from Hyde to the mystery circle.


As can be seen, the mystery circle doesn't line up perfectly with the map location of the turntable, but I still think it is the shadowy remains of the turntable pit. We can't tell what part erosion has played and where the actual center of the mystery circle is. Even when I visited in the late '70s I couldn't find the turntable pit walls, so the dirt could have moved around a bit. We also don't know for sure, at least I don't, if the maps were drawn from plans or as built or some combination of the two. They aren't always the same. For all I know, they could have scraped dirt out of the mystery circle to fill in the turntable pit when they built the road.

I can't wait to get my feet on the ground again and see what can be learned. For now, I'm calling ROW Explorer's overlay pretty darned close.