NW Morris County township boundaries question

I know this is slightly off-topic, but since discussion of NJ county/municipal history and geography is quite common on this forum, so here goes:

I was curious about the "Five Corners" area in northwestern Morris County-where the 5 municipalities of Rockaway (township), Jefferson, Wharton, Mine Hill and Roxbury meet. This is located along the Rockaway River and just SW of the M & E's Lake (Chester) Jct., along Dewey Av.

My question is about the Rockaway township line. In the newest New Jersey official map of Morris County by NJ DOT (which went online this week), it shows Rockaway township extending south of the Jefferson line and having a small section border Roxbury along the Rockaway River.

The old (2000) map and official Morris County maps shows Rockaway township ending where it meets Jefferson Twp. and thereby not bordering Roxbury.

Which maps are more accurate?

To view PDF maps (w/ Adobe Reader):

http://www.nj.gov/transportation/gis/maps/morris.pdf (new version)

http://web.archive.org/web/200306121622 ... morris.pdf (old version, archived)

To see the changes in question, magnify the maps to the "Five Corners" (Rockaway/Jefferson/Wharton/Mine Hill/Roxbury) area.

If you need an accurate answer, bet bet is to stop in at a tax office and ask to see the official tax maps. Municipalities and counties tend to be very protective of their turf when it comes to collecting the dollar!

The official Morris County map produced and distributed by Morris County is the most accurate, but also wrong. The State maps seem like they are based off USGS maps.

The new Morris County GIS system has supposedly corrected the error, but I am not sure how accurate their "correction" is either. Tax maps from each town were used to reach this conclusion, but tax maps have a tendency to be pretty inaccurate too, so unless each property is surveyed we won't know for sure.

On the GIS system, the Jefferson boundary actually continues a little south of the Wharton Borough line, thereby cutting off Rockaway Township. The distance between the limit of Rockaway Township and Roxbury Township is about 25 feet. The Mine Hill boundary is about 225 feet from this point.

The Morris County GIS system should be available online in 2005, or so I am told. New digital aerial photos will be flow this winter which will give us the ability to acurately see and measure things at a 50 foot scale.

Chris Vitz
County of Morris Engineering Dept.

The widespread use of GPS is causing a lot of boundary clarification, especially where there isn't much worth taxing (state park lands over lapping tows, for example). Several mountains have had a few dozen or few hundred feet adjusted to their elevation.

When one of my neighbors was resurveyed, my property line moved about a foot into his yard, and he moved about two feet into the other neighbor's yard. When the other neighbor's title company had a resurvey, they came up with a different reading

GPS isn't very accurate for elevation from what I understand, even with prolonged measurement times. With WAAS it's good for lateral, if the equipment is left in place for a couple of days to get enough data.

The aerial photos are used to determine elevations on the GIS mapping. We will get the digital photos with the contours already mapped. Its a pretty neat geometry trick coming up with the elevations from the photo alone. As Ken said GIS units do not arrive at vertical elevations too quickly. But their are a combination of GIS and radio wave based systems that can be used to get more accurate. It all depends upon who much you want to spend.

FYI, The main reasons aerial photos are taken in the fall and spring; no leaves on the trees or snow on the ground which would throw off the calculated elevations.

Also the GIS units could be more accurate. From what I understand the military does not permit the most accurate measurements for civil use. The best hand held units available today are only accurate to 30 meters, with a correction they get to submeter. Ground based units are more accurate, with a correction, but also take longer to get that accuracy.

To bring this back to railroading, the raod, tax map information, and aerial photographs of the Morris County GIS system should be part of what is made available to the public online. This should help anyone trace the existing rail lines and the abandoned ones too.

Chris