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Someone bolts a line in the middle of nowhere thats looks like its never been done. After bolting it of course someone says I did that ten years ago on gear and i am chopping your bolts..
My question..
Is it legit to chop bolts if the route had never been documented or there were no signs it had ever been done?

There's no solid answer to that question. The general rule is to respect the ethics of the paticular crag. The consencus at the Red seems to be that if you don't want to clip you dont have to and chopping is in poor taste. Myself, I think anchors are handy. I'm also dissapointed when I see a one star crack with a sport line on top of it. I'm not going to chop it though.

I think in that situation, the line most likely should not have been bolted in the first place regarless of whether it has seen a previous ascent. I think the title of this thread also say a lot to that effect.

And since we are conversing in "what if" land. Perhaps they should have made a greater effort so see if anyone had done it before.

This actually happened with several routes at the New (strike a scowl being one). The routes were put up as r/x rated trad routes, then people came by later and bolted the line, as there was no documentation. I think they worked out which routes should stay as bolted lines, and which one need to be traddy on a case by case basis with the FA teams. Most of the lines stayed at sport routes, which is a good thing, because strike a scowl is rad, and would be really, really scary as a trad lead.

I remember Strike being being really scarey as a sport lead, but the view from the top was wicked cool.

I walk up to the route and think sport route.. I lower the route and climb the route and still think Sport route. I make it a sport route. Its only later that someone claims to have done it on gear. If I had known of course I would not have bolted it... but thats not the case.. Its about can you really say anything if you and partner were the only two to do it and know about it yrs and yrs ago? I titled this thread b/c of what i found out.. not that its an obvious trad line.

Wes wrote:strike a scowl is rad, and would be really, really scary as a trad lead.

Damn straight. Another that comes to mind in this neck of the woods is Chemical Imbalance.

I think once you found out someone had previously done it on gear, you need to ask the FA party. If they feel the route should stay trad, you should remove the bolts even though you didn't intend to step on any toes since you didn't know anyone had previously climbed it. If on the other hand the FAer says they don't care, then leave em in. Either way, you should definitely respect the wishes of the FAers regardless of whether or not they reported the route to the masses

by the way, where is the route? Just curious