I Love Survey History

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a bit “quircky” about title insurance. A Geek really.   I keep  track of fun survey descriptions and silly names that have been recorded.  I love the history of surveys for example. My favorite description (to date) begins and ends “At the Stump of the tree, where Philo Blake killed the Bear.” Must have been talk of the town to remember THAT tree.    I have actually read the original PLSS instructions – fascinating!

But now comes a really fun article about survey history at StraightDope with such gems as this

“  In the 1770s a party-hearty type named Collins led a team that surveyed the boundary between Quebec and Vermont. On one 22-mile stretch, a fifth of their expenses went for booze. The result, an international commission later acknowledged, was “very far from a straight line.”