Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Ghost Station

























This crumbling Hess Gas station is hidden in the brush at the northeast corner of the intersection of Rte 50 and Gum Springs Road in the Arcola area of Loudoun.
The concrete gas pump islands remain on the ground along with some cracked white cement which would have been the lane cars pulled into.
I realize now there are serious flaws with my old Garmin Extrex GPS. When I added this point as x-y data to the map it showed up 1,853 feet to the west of where it should be when plotted on an unprojected map, and 1,863 feet off when plotted in the VA State Plane Coordinate system North NAD83. So from here on out I'm just going to use the GPS for the elevation readings which based on the topo overlay in yesterday's map appear accurate. I will manually plot points on the map using roads, etc... to get the point as accurate as possible. I need a new GPS.
The elevation at the Hess Station was 373. The site is directly alongside 50 and ripe for being wiped away when the road is widened.

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