Describing the land we love with maps

When I was a Boy Scout, still wet behind my ears, I got my first look at a topographic map. I was instantly fascinated by all those brown squiggly lines indicating elevation changes on the ground.
In contrast to the brown lines, which were never straight, I saw a network of very straight red lines running north and south, as well as east and west.
Shortly after that lesson on maps, I began saving money for an entire set of USGS topographic maps of San Juan County. That map collection soon became one of my most prized possessions.
How many of you, while trudging across the landscape, have accidentally, or maybe on purpose, stumbled over a pipe with an official-looking brass cap on top, stamped with a bunch of official-looking information that included a date?
I tripped over several of them as a boy while chasing about the hills west of Monticello in search of a live mouse I could catch by the tail to scare my mom with.
It took me several years to understand what these small monuments were and fully appreciate the purpose they served. A light went on in my head when I realized they marked the spot where two of those red lines on the map crossed each other, and that the squares made by those intersecting lines represented one square mile of land or 640 acres, complete with a unique description different from every other place on the earth.
The story behind those red lines and the brass-capped pipes dates back more than 240 years, when the Continental Congress, before the US Constitution was even finished, let alone ratified by a single state, passed the Land Ordinance of 1785.
Thomas Jefferson is credited with conceiving the idea of creating a Public Land Survey System (PLSS), which the Ordinance established. He envisioned a system to facilitate the orderly division and sale of public lands by creating a rectangular grid with monuments set at the corners.
See www.usgs.gov and search PLSS for a detailed description.
This system of measuring, mapping, and monuments provide the foundation for the legal descriptions of land in most of the country.
Immediately following the passage of the Land Ordinance, surveyors were contracted to implement it by measuring, mapping, and setting monuments across the country.
Establishing and maintaining that survey has been ongoing since then. Today, the Cadastral Survey group within the BLM is responsible for maintaining it.
The PLSS in Utah begins at the corner of Main and South Temple Streets in downtown Salt Lake City.
At nearly 8,000 square miles, San Juan County is the twelfth largest of more than 3,000 counties in the United States.
Unlike western Kansas or the Texas Panhandle, where you can stand on a tunafish can and see the back of your head, the rugged character of this county made surveying all of it less of a priority than other locations where numerous homestead applications were a higher priority.
The entire county is mapped, but the more remote places have never been monumented, and likely never will be.
We often fail to give them the credit they deserve, but those original surveyors worked hard under challenging circumstances to complete the implementation of the PLSS and were among the earliest non-indigenous people to lay eyes on the land we have become attached to.
I have reviewed the notes of several of the original surveyors in this part of the state. Of the notes I studied, those of Scott P. Stewart (1876-1966) were the most helpful.
He wasn’t the first, but he arrived in 1911 to correct and install newer-style monuments in some of the more populated areas of the county, as well as venture into the more obscure locations nearby, such as Salt Creek, where Kirk’s Cabin lies.
In my recent trek to same place, with copies of the original survey notes, I stood in front of that cabin, studying the notes and looking upon the challenging land features before me.
I imagined what it would be like in 1911 to be in his shoes with the most modern instruments available at the time, but still primitive compared to today’s technology with satellite guided locating devices — the cliffs, deep canyons, and thick brush and trees would make this a tough job.
After a few minutes of pondering the world in 1911, I opened a mapping app on my phone, found the coordinates of three or four of his monuments, and set about to locate them. I entered them into my phone and found every monument I looked for in less time than I had imagined, in the exact spot his notes and the maps indicated they would be.
Fortunately, the Public Land Survey System has endured well, is continually maintained, and remains in use today.
The legal descriptions of the home you live in, your place of work, the school your children attend, and all other land parcels are anchored to points in that system.
Without it, chaos would result. We owe a debt of gratitude to Thomas Jefferson for the idea, the Continental Congress for having the foresight to create the system, and to the thousands of surveyors who implemented the system that has endured for so long.