Although at first you may assume that there haven’t been any important or famous land surveyors or land surveys in the United States, the truth is that many of the borders that come into play in your daily life were set by land surveys.

Though the boundary of each individual piece of property is usually set by surveyors, on a larger scale, land surveys are much more important. Take, for example, the Mason-Dixon line. What began as a simple property dispute between two families eventually came to be the distinguishing line between the Northern and Southern United States in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed this line, the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, from 1763 to 1785. In the debate over the Missouri Compromise in 1820, those above the line were “free states”, while those below were “slave states.” Until the present day, this line is still used to distinguish the North from the South.

In 1777, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, George Washington appointed Robert Erskine to survey the fledgling nation. The maps Erskine and his team developed were the first official maps of the United States; they assisted greatly in military operations and other activities as the new nation was getting started. As the first official maps, the Erskine maps laid the groundwork onto which each later survey added new information.

Other important land surveys dealt with the land not as it was being settled, but as it was being built upon. Land surveys can be useful not only in settling boundaries, but also for deciding how to build on a given area of land. For example, Benjamin Banneker, a self-taught African American surveyor, was appointed by President George Washington in 1789 for the first survey of what would become Washington D.C., the capitol of the nation. This survey, between 1791 and 1793, laid the groundwork for all of the national government buildings.

Another important land survey in the United States was the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Although you may think of them as explorers, they detailed the boundaries, rivers, mountains, and other features in what would become the western half of the United States, certainly an important land surveying act. With considerable accuracy given their time period and the constraints of traveling across completely unknown lands, which made it extremely difficult for Lewis and Clark to know exactly where they were at all times, they surveyed the west from 1804 to 1806. The land they surveyed, obtained through the Louisiana Purchase, included parts of 14 current-day United States, a substantial amount of land. At the time of the purchase, it was not even known exactly how much land existed to the west; the Lewis & Clark expedition surveyed this area, giving the first complete look into the layout of the land that had been purchased.

Countless other lesser-known land surveys played important roles as the colonies were first beginning, as well as during westward expansion, laying out the boundaries between each jurisdiction. In a few centuries, their original lines would become the boundaries between the continental United States. If these boundaries had been drawn differently due to a different team of surveyors, you may actually have been living in a different state right now.

Author Bio: We at Point to Point Land Surveyors pride ourselves on accuracy, customer service and quality work delivered on time, guaranteed. Telecommunication land surveys are a specialty.

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