756
December 2018
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
O
riginal inhabitants of modern Venezuela
consisted of the Arawak, Caraïbe, and
Chibcha peoples. Discovered by Columbus
on 1 August, 1498, the coast of Venezuela was
traced by the Spanish navigators Ojeda and de la
Cosa in 1499, and Las Casas established the first
European settlement at Cumaná in 1520. The
present capitol of Caracas was founded in 1567.
Venezuela was included in the viceroyalty of New
Granada in 1718, and was made a captaincy-
general in 1731. Led by “El Libertador” (The
Liberator), Simón Bolívar, Venezuela declared
its independence from Spain in 1811, but it was
not assured until the battle of Campo Carabobo
in 1821 near Valencia. Venezuela was part of
Greater Colombia from 1819-1829 and formally
separated in 1830. Bolívar’s villa in the mountains
is spectacular. The German town of Colonia Tovar
was founded in 1834, and I recommend its cuisine.
Venezuela is more than twice the size of California; its
terrain consists of the Andes Mountains and Lake Maraca-
ibo Lowlands in the northwest; central plains (Llanos); and
the Guiana Highlands in the southeast. The highest point is
snowcapped Pico Bolivar (La Columna) at 5007 m (16,427 ft),
and the Orinoco River is the third longest in South America.
Longitude observations were first made in the Caribbean
port city of La Guaira by Humboldt in 1800 and later by the
Spaniard Chief of Squadron, Don José Espinoza in 1809. The
THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF
The Grids & Datums column has completed an exploration of
every country on the Earth. For those who did not get to enjoy
this world tour the first time,
PE&RS
is reprinting prior articles
from the column. This month’s article on The Bolivarian Republic
of Venezuela was originally printed in 2000 but contains updates
to their coordinate system since then.
Comisión del Plano Militar (Military Map Commission) was
founded in 1904. The first geodetic surveys were initiated
by the Army in 1911 in support of the railroad construction
project between Caracas and La Guaira, where the interna-
tional airport for Caracas is now located. The origin point for
this first system was established on the plateau of the city
of Caracas below the Army’s Cajigal Observatory, probably
to facilitate measurement of the initial baseline. Initial ob-
servations at Cajigal started in 1905, followed the next year
in January through March by Dr. Luis Ugueto and Dr. Fe-
lipe Aguerrevere who determined the latitude by the Talcott
Method (invented by Captain Talcott of the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers). The Loma Quintana Datum of 1911 origin (lo-
cated in the El Mirador subdivision, 23 de Enero District of
Caracas), is:
Φ
o
= 10° 30´ 24.680˝ North,
Λ
o
= –66° 56´ 02.512˝
West of Greenwich, the defining azimuth to station Volcán
(
α
o
) = 316° 01´ 50.33˝, H
o
= 1,077.54 m above mean sea lev-
el at La Guaira. (My son André still remembers “hangover
soup,” the local name for bouillabaisse served in a La Guaira
beachfront restaurant). The ellipsoid of reference is the Hay-
by
Clifford J. Mugnier, CP, CMS, FASPRS
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 84, No. 12, December 2018, pp. 756–759.
0099-1112/18/756–759
© 2018 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.84.12.756
