Chapter 14. Getting here
Part 2. Reading your report.
This part tells where your land sits among named places: the nearest creek, hill and town, and how far each is.
What it says. Nearby named places and their distances; roads, railroads and post offices where the records have them.
Where the facts come from. The U.S. Geological Survey's list of the nation's official place names.
What to notice. The distances are approximate. In the list of named places, a stream or river is marked "near this land," with no distance, because the federal list places each stream at a single point, its mouth, which can be far from where the stream passes your land. Names tell history: a creek named for a family, a "Prairie" where there is now forest. Oregon Geographic Names, at any Oregon library, tells how most names came about.
If the part is folded. "The nearest named places are listed in the appendix."
In the sample report
The nearest named places are Pedee, about 0.6 miles away, and Pedee Creek, about 0.9 miles. The list marks the Luckiamute River only as "a stream named in the national place-names list, near this land."1
Notes
- The sample report, "Getting here," from the USGS Geographic Names Information System. ↩