Our friend Mary graciously offered to host us for the day and drive my father to his appointment at Penn Medicine. As usual, my father suggested that I see if there were any benchmarks near her house that we might be able to do a quick search for. Well, it turns out that there are a few!

The azimuth mark for this triangulation station happens to be set on a curb right in Mary’s development, and it is even visible on the Street View, so we expected it to be an easy recovery. The road here is narrow, so instead of parking near the mark, we parked at the nearby St. Isaac Jogues church and I ran over to document the mark. It was an easy find, as expected.

I didn’t know if dad would be up to checking out the area around the tri-station, but he was, and we still had some time before Mary was expecting us. It appeared that the easiest access would be via the small trails leading from the neighborhood behind the Valley Forge Middle School to the school itself. And, indeed, I had no trouble getting to the general area … but it was so thickly overgrown with tall grasses, matted-down grass, and blackberry bushes that I really had no hope of finding the mark without some tools (like a machete and metal detector, at least) and more time. I did come within 5 feet of the coordinates at one point, but I didn’t see the mark or any sign of the monument beneath all of the overgrowth. There is also no longer a witness post at the site.

This one is probably worth attempting again in better conditions (maybe late winter) and with some appropriate tools.