herrfrank wrote:
One neighborhood legend -- the reason that there is a monument with traffic signal in the middle of the intersection of Paseo and Linwood -- this point marks the surveyor baseline for all Jackson County roads, according to the story, as directed by Harry Truman when he was County Commissioner.
the street was plotted n 1907 when he lived in Grandview. the stop light installed 8 years after he stopped being county commissioner and was county judge
it's unlikely the stop light is a survey point since you need to be able to put equipment on top of the mark, to measure lines from it. you can't have a non-moving baseline marker be in a place you have to resurvey every time you repave the road. and who surveys from the middle of the street anyways, seems unsafe.
and you can't have a line with just one point, there would dozens across the county so you can find the nearest ones to work with rather than having to measure across dozens of miles into KC. there would have to be at least one other point somewhere in the county. So if Truman did such a proclamation and if it really was used for surveys, you would think the legend would actually cover the actual line, not just one point on it. (i.e. "it goes from X on the state line, cuts right through the stop sign here and heads to the county line past blue springs")
I'm going with cool idea but false. too much weird things don't line up with the dates and the reality of doing surveys