Talk:List of principal and guide meridians and base lines of the United States

Vagueness of locations

On 31 October 2008 an editor added the vague template to the locations column of most of the entries in the /* Named meridians */ section. What level of information is appropriate her? Could more detailed information, as found in the specific articles, be a substitute for putting it here? Could the map at the Principal meridian article be used here to show the areas? Or would that be too much duplication? Is it possible that just adding See the map at Principal meridian and articles about specific meridians for more detailed locations. would solve the perceived problem? --Bejnar (talk) 17:59, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the source called "vague", http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/ --and don't see anything to do with principal meridians. I searched on some names like "Willamette Meridian" and didn't find much. It is unclear to me what this footnote is for. Am I missing something? Pfly (talk) 19:11, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

The gpo style manual [1], chapter 18, page 346-347 lists the names of the principal meridians and base lines with states which were wholly or partly surveyed from them. YBG (talk) 05:49, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

It looks to me like those which are marked 'vague' are those where the location is an entire state without indicating which part of the state. The underlying problem is that the column is not the 'location' of the meridian or baseline but actually the area surveyed based on the meridian and base line. I will attempt to improve this table. YBG (talk) 16:25, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization

The style guide linked above (presumably the most modern version) does not include the table of guide meridians. But older versions do as this search shows. It also shows that most uses are lower case, but that somewhere between 1949 and 1984 the GPO style guide started capitalizing "Guide Meridian". There are few or no other appearances of these terms available, so it's hard to know if anyone followed their implicit advice on this, or even noticed it. To be consistent with more widely used meridian names, and with MOS:CAPS, I've returned them to lower case. This has been reverted a couple of times, but without much explanation. Let's talk. Dicklyon (talk) 05:45, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

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Basic Definition is missing

Firstly, what is a “guide meridian”? The article seems to be missing this essential bit of information. griff 17:59, 23 June 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pauljohngriffin (talk • contribs)

It seems to mean a secondary meridian used for reference where the primary is impractical. For example, in northern Washington the primary meridian is mostly wet; so a guide meridian is drawn 12 miles east of it without that inconvenience. —Tamfang (talk) 23:59, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Seems to be something like that. According to this Glossaries of BLM surveying and mapping terms:

GUIDE MERIDIAN – An auxiliary governing line projected north along an astronomical meridian, from points established on the base line or a standard parallel, usually at intervals of 24 miles east or west of the principal meridian, on which township, section, and quarter-section corners are established. See AUXILIARY GUIDE MERIDIAN.

So, usually (but not always?) some of the N-S township lines in between principal meridians in the PLSS system—Survey township span six miles, so apparently there's (usually?) a guide meridian every four townships? The phrase "guide meridian" turns up a bunch of related stuff, but I can't find anything about it at all on Wikipedia or Wiktionary. Sometime someone should look into this more and add info about it to Principal meridian and any other relevant pages, like here. Pfly (talk) 07:16, 22 July 2023 (UTC)