Searching for Survey Records

Seems that in Bernalillo County, NM, there is a bit of a gap between recording surveys (non-subdivision plats) and how they are indexed and located. We have for years had microfiche of all the plat books, but we've never received the survey book. The survey book is for plats of surveys, boundary surveys, ALTA surveys, etc. They are rarely reported on in Title commitments and I believe the reason why is that they really aren't indexed very well (or indexed at all for that matter). Makes one wonder which surveys are really found during the course of research and which are not. It is poor database management to index something such as S10, T4N, R5E, N.M.PM - if I run a search on S10, T4N, R5E, NMPM, it would probably not come up - depending on the search engine. The county (and area professionals) need to come up with a better solution here and implement it pronto! We're missing out on a lot of good data (I'm assuming) and every day that passes, is another day that legacy data is missed. At least the Clerk's Records Search is online - but I wish we could get to the level of Maricopa County's map locator. Maybe someday....

Nevada LS

Well, I've submitted my paperwork and application to sit for the Nevada LS exam. One of the three remaining states I intend to pursue a license in (the others being Utah and California). Of the states I've been involved with thus far, Nevada seems to be fairly organized. They are also populous enough to have 4 state specific exams each year, so that works well into schedule for a summer license try. BHI's regional effort is expanding nicely - in the past week or so, we had two guys in our Colorado office sit for Kansas and Wyoming and Rob here in the Albuquerque office will be sitting for Utah some time in June. That will bring our license coverage to NM, CO, TX, AZ, NE, and MI with WY, KS, UT, and NV within the next several months.

By the way, the Nevada Department of Transportation has some nice maps for free download (State Maps, Quad Maps, Area Maps and Historic Maps). A nice collection for getting acquainted with NV...

David Rumsey.com

I came across this map site about 7 or 8 years ago - a fantastic collection of historic maps. I haven't visited it recently but then just found this YouTube Video. Looks like David has been up to some cool innovation in the realm of historic maps.


This video is about 10+ minutes, but an interesting history of his map collection and some of the things he has done in a digital sense as of late. I have been doing some similar tasks with Bohannan Huston's plat database and we have also worked with similar geo-referencing of scanned images in conjunction with our GIS projects and Mapping projects. It is quite powerful to be able to pull up all the documents created for a given area - all of which are geo-referenced and layered so that you can at a glance, understand the history of survey and mapping for a given location. Very Cool!

North Arrow

Learned something new today (or at least re-learned it in the case that I knew it once and forgot). In older maps, a full North Arrow is intended to mean true North while a half North Arrow may indicate magnetic north with a east or west declination depending on which side the arrow is on. Everything we do here at work is true North / Geodetic North / Grid North so I guess I haven't thought about the north arrow in light of indicating declination. Luckily we our typical north arrow looks like this...

so it shouldn't matter much.

Earthquake

Purple dots - places you might want to watch out for. They might be a good place to be from.

Historic Maps

If you like old, historic maps, there are some cool ones here. I'm off to the ACSM conference. Will be back on line in a couple of days...

Beauty in Engineering and Surveying??

"There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection."
H.G. Wells

What do you think? I tend to agree, however, we are in an industry today where nobody wants to pay for aesthetics - or at the very least a pittance is paid or it is an afterthought. If ugliness is the measure of imperfection in engineering, then is beauty the measure of perfection? If it is, how should we as engineers and surveyors move along the spectrum towards perfection of beauty. While exceptions might exist, beauty isn't something that we as humans can command and it happens - it takes time and thought and focus.

The same can be said for surveying and mapping I believe. An "ugly" product shows lack of focus and thought, and a lack of ingenuity. A map or plat is something that can show beauty if given or provided the time to create. Something we strive to do here at BHI although there is always the tension of time and budget and the pull to show data as it has always been shown rather than try something new. I think we do an exceptional job at pushing the envelope to create and develop new ideas and develop a product that shows beauty.

I think it can be done…