Its first paragraph identified the neighboring owners.
Its second identified the ranch property.
And the next section described a supplemental permanent right-of-way for agricultural access across a western crossing.
The old woman pressed her fingers against the edge of the table.
"My father wrote about it."
The attorney read carefully.
The document described a second access route intended to supplement, not replace, the earlier granted easement.
It also referred to the original road corridor.
Both documents were signed and recorded.
The attorney leaned back.
"This is important."
The daughter smiled.
"Does it prove the bank is wrong?"
"It strongly supports the existence of two historic access grants. But we still need to locate and accurately map their described routes."
The granddaughter leaned forward.
"Can we find the missing exhibit?"
The records supervisor looked at the recording stamp.
"Possibly. This reference indicates the survey was filed separately with the miscellaneous plats."
They moved to another section.
Several large archival drawers contained maps on thick paper.
The oldest ones had yellowed around the edges.
Some were hand-drawn.
Others carried the neat signatures of surveyors long since dead.
The supervisor opened one drawer.
Then another.
After almost an hour, the granddaughter pointed toward a folded map.
"That number looks familiar."
The clerk carefully lifted it out.
The map was brittle.
Its edges were worn.
A blue ink stamp appeared in the lower corner.
The ranch woman recognized the year.
1957.
The attorney adjusted her glasses.
"Let's take our time with this."
They unfolded the map across a broad table.
There were section lines.
Quarter-section boundaries.
A creek.
A county highway.
A narrow marked corridor leading from the highway toward the ranch.
And three original survey monuments.
The ranch woman stared at the drawing.
Her father's cedar marker was one of them.
The attorney traced the corridor carefully.
Then she stopped.
The daughter noticed.
"What?"
The attorney pointed to a note beside the line.
Perpetual nonexclusive access easement, sixty feet in width, for agricultural and residential ingress and egress.
The ranch woman leaned forward.
"Sixty feet?"
The attorney nodded.
"According to this notation."
The older woman looked toward her daughter.
"All these years, I thought it was thirty."
The attorney checked the deed language.
"The ledger recorded a thirty-foot traveled road. The survey appears to describe a wider protected corridor."
She studied the legal description again.
"That distinction may be very important."
The granddaughter looked at the map.
"Because the actual dirt road can move a little inside the corridor?"
"Potentially, depending on the deed language and how the rights were exercised. We need the independent surveyor to reconstruct the location and account for later changes."