Searching for Survey Records

Seems that in Bernalillo County, NM, there is a bit of a gap between recording surveys (non-subdivision plats) and how they are indexed and located. We have for years had microfiche of all the plat books, but we've never received the survey book. The survey book is for plats of surveys, boundary surveys, ALTA surveys, etc. They are rarely reported on in Title commitments and I believe the reason why is that they really aren't indexed very well (or indexed at all for that matter). Makes one wonder which surveys are really found during the course of research and which are not. It is poor database management to index something such as S10, T4N, R5E, N.M.PM - if I run a search on S10, T4N, R5E, NMPM, it would probably not come up - depending on the search engine. The county (and area professionals) need to come up with a better solution here and implement it pronto! We're missing out on a lot of good data (I'm assuming) and every day that passes, is another day that legacy data is missed. At least the Clerk's Records Search is online - but I wish we could get to the level of Maricopa County's map locator. Maybe someday....

To Accept or Not to Accept

I'm working on a boundary survey in the east Sandia Mountains - being the NW 1/4NW 1/4NW1/4, S34 (Approximately 10 acres). The terrain is quite rough and very wooded. Turns out the county road isn't along the section line like it is supposed to be.

That's not too much of an issue (from a survey standpoint) - it is clearly not along the section line - Oops.

The preceding plat corner monuments are waayyyy out.

These will simply be rejected - they're just plain bad.

The fences (lines of occupation) in some places are right on, others are way off...

The terrain is so rough here that I really can rely on the fence/occupation as decent evidence. The fences predate the BLM survey in 1976, but the BLM apparently didn't put much weight on the fence line/occupation line.

There are some other monuments that are fairly close on.

These pose a bit of a problem. Are they acceptable? In terms of the terrain - probably so, but the section line is the section line. I really can't introduce an angle point in that line where it does not exist. The monument pictured here is not called for anywhere. In NM it's against the law to remove a property corner, so my option is to reject the point and set a new one (about 0.7' away) or to accept the old monument which is reasonable for when it was set, but not so hot for today's day and age. Thus the dilemma....