help needed

[gold seeker]

HI, new to this fourm and new to the world of gps, as you can see by my name I do gold prospcting in western colorado, my question is,

I need to find the exact corner on blm maps of 1/4 -1/4 sections ( township range section) i need it to stake claims.
I have a Garmin Oregon 550t and bought and put in it the sd card topo us 24k (mountain central -co and ut sept 2008) but it did not help, if I put in coordinates it will tell me the township range and section it is in but not the corners so I still dont know where to get the exact coordinates so i can plot it on my gps and the hike to it, I have tried to use the blm web site but you can not get close enough on the map to get the exact corner, if I put the pointer ( on the blm map) on a known spot (like the corner of a road or the middle of a bridge) when I go to it with the 550t it will be off by several hundred yards or more.
any ideas?
HELP IS NEEDED

Thank you

gold seeker
goldseeker

[maps4gps]

BLM has files at http://www.geocommunicator.gov/GeoComm/lsis_home/home/index.html with T&R lines, section lines, and QQ section lines. The one I download 2+ years ago does not have all areas in western CO with qq data and some areas have claims within the sections/qq sections.  BLM is still adding data to some areas.

The situation can get messy where the sections from different base lines meet (overlay).  
Download the file for CO and download GlobaMapper.  You do not need to register/pay to view most type of files.  You can zoom-in and transfer a coordinate.  If you need a lot of them, there was a program called shp2txt that would create an ASCII text file which could be then be converted to a POI file.  Not the easiest method, but can be done with free programs.

Many reasons why objects are not at the same location.  Datums would have to be the same and the same source data would have to be used.

What area of western Colorado; bounding coordinates prefered?  

---   They also have the data available in smaller size units by County and Township/Range.  gpsmapedit can read the shapefiles; you could use it to covert the data to .mp format and eventually the Garmin .img format.  Not sure if gpsmapedit can convert polygons into lines.

[-Oz-]

Here are more BLM files: http://www.blm.gov/nstc/gis/GISsites.html

[Seldom]

Hope the answers to the following aren't too obvious, but my little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

The files at geocommunicator.gov are available as polygon shapefiles, and could be incorporated into a transparent map using GPSmapedit and cgpsmapper, free versions of both.  Would having the corners as a transparent map help gold seeker?  Also, if he's using a 550, not a Trimble, will he be able to locate his claim accurately enough?

maps4gps set me straight on this.  No available polygon styles appear to be transparent.  Hence, corners are not visible.