23-1908. Corners; establishment and restoration; rules governing.
The boundaries of the public lands established by the duly appointed government surveyors, when approved by the Surveyor General and accepted by the government, are unchangeable, and the corners established thereon by them shall be held and considered as the true corners which they were intended to represent, and the restoration of lines and corners of such surveys and the division of sections into their legal subdivisions shall be in accordance with the laws of the United States, the circular of instructions of the United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, on the restoration of lost and obliterated section corners and quarter corners, and the circular of instructions to the county surveyors by the State Surveyor under authority of the Board of Educational Lands and Funds. The county surveyor is hereby authorized to restore lost and obliterated corners of original surveys and to establish the subdivisional corners of sections in accordance with the provisions of this section and section 23-1907. Any registered land surveyor registered under the Land Surveyors Regulation Act is hereby authorized to establish any corner not monumented in the original government surveys in accordance with the provisions of this section and section 23-1907. Subdivision shall be executed according to the plan indicated by the original field notes and plats of surveys and governed by the original and legally restored corners. The survey of the subdivisional lines of sections in violation of this section shall be absolutely void.
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Annotations
This section provides that the restoration of lines and corners of original government surveys shall be in accordance with the laws of the United States and the circular of instructions of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. The circular of instructions of the U.S. Department of the Interior provides that in restoring lines of a survey the purpose is not to correct the original survey, but to determine where the corner was established in the beginning; that an existent corner is one whose position can be located by an acceptable survey record, including testimony of witnesses who have a dependable knowledge of the original location; and that an obliterated corner's location may be recovered if proved beyond a reasonable doubt by unquestionable testimony. State v. Jarchow, 219 Neb. 88, 362 N.W.2d 19 (1985).
Government monuments, if found, will control as to location of section corners and subsequent surveys. Runkle v. Welty, 86 Neb. 680, 126 N.W. 139 (1910).
Government monuments or corners will control course and distance and government plats and field notes are competent evidence. Peterson v. Skjelver, 43 Neb. 663, 62 N.W. 43 (1895).