The Lines that Define Us

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Uintah County Surveyor's Office | Angela Hawkins, Uintah County

There are invisible lines running across every piece of land in Uintah County. Most of us never think about them—until we need to. Maybe you're building a fence. Installing a driveway. Buying property. Suddenly, knowing exactly where your land ends and your neighbor's begins becomes very important. That's where the Uintah County Surveyor's Office comes in.

Like many county departments, their best work often goes unnoticed. When property boundaries are documented correctly, roads are built where they belong, utilities are placed accurately, and construction projects move forward without conflict. When the foundation is solid, everything built on top of it has a place to stand.

That foundation began nearly 250 years ago. Following the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson championed the Land Ordinance of 1785, creating the Public Land Survey System (PLSS)—a standardized way to divide and describe land across the growing United States. It replaced a patchwork of inconsistent land records with an organized system of townships, ranges, and sections that still governs property ownership across much of the American West today.

Statue by Daub, Firmin, and Hendrickson. Photo by Todd Babcock

In 1855, the first U.S. Surveyor-General of Utah David H. Burr, set a stone as the southeast corner of Temple Square in Salt Lake City to officially designated the point as the beginning of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) in the Utah Territory. 

Photo courtesy of the Center for Land Use Interpretation. 

This monument, known as the Salt Lake Base and Meridian, became the reference point for property descriptions, gridded streets, and land records throughout the state. Every township and range designation in Uintah County is measured from that point. Every legal property line, county road right-of-way, utility easement, and subdivision ultimately traces back to that survey framework.

While the system is centuries old, the work of maintaining it continues every day. The Surveyor's Office preserves thousands of records, reviews subdivision plats, establishes easements, helps locate road and utility corridors, and assists property owners when questions arise about boundaries. It is also responsible for protecting the survey monuments that serve as the legal framework for land ownership throughout the county.

By Isomorphism3000 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

Surveyor Brock Slaugh describes the responsibility simply:
"We're really just caretakers of the record. Our job is to make sure the people who come after us can trust what we leave behind."

It's a simple description, but an accurate one. Surveying is often described as one of the oldest professions. But it may also be one of the most forward-looking. Every monument set today, every record preserved, and every plat reviewed is work done not only for today's property owners, but for someone decades from now who will depend on those same records. 

Those monuments may look like nothing more than a small metal cap, an iron pipe, a piece of rebar, or an old stone marker. In reality, they represent the legal location of a property corner. Surveyors rely on these physical markers—along with historical field notes, measurements, and records—to determine where property boundaries exist on the ground.

A Survey Metal Marker, Photo by Angela Hawkins

Long before metal survey caps became the standard, surveyors established corners with carefully placed stone monuments. In forested areas, they also created witness trees, sometimes called bearing trees—living trees blazed with an axe and documented by species, direction, and distance from the corner. If a monument was ever damaged or lost, those trees could help future surveyors reestablish the exact location. It was a remarkably durable system, designed to outlast the survey crews who created it.

A Witness Tree within Uintah County,. Photo by Brock Slaugh, Uintah County Surveyor.

Many of the monuments the Surveyor's Office references today were originally placed in the late 1800s by surveyors working on horseback, carrying chains and transits across rugged country that had yet to be settled. Around 1910, stone monuments gradually gave way to the metal survey caps still used today. Yet the older records remain just as valuable. Surveyors regularly rely on handwritten field notes, witness trees, and monuments that are more than a century old to locate lost corners, resolve boundary questions, and connect today's GPS measurements back to the original survey. In many ways, each generation of surveyors builds upon the work of the last.

Chainmen of the United States Geological Survey, 1883. Photo Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

One of the most common misconceptions is that the measurements written in a deed determine where a property line is located. In reality, monuments carry significant legal weight. The bearings and distances in a legal description help a surveyor find the monument, but if there's ever a conflict between the measurements and the original monument, the monument controls. That's also why residents should never move or disturb a survey monument, even if it appears insignificant. What looks like a small metal cap in the ground may represent generations of legal history and serve as the reference point for countless surrounding properties.

A rock monument with carvings. Photo by Brock Slaugh, Uintah County Surveyor
Surveying has certainly evolved. Today's professionals use GPS, satellite technology, advanced coordinate systems, drones, and sophisticated mapping software to achieve remarkable precision. But the mission remains the same as it was nearly 250 years ago: preserving an accurate and trusted framework for land ownership. Much of the work performed by the Uintah County Surveyor's Office happens quietly behind the scenes. Most residents will never meet the people who maintain survey records, protect monuments, review plats, and help resolve boundary questions.

A GPS receiver marks the metal marker buried deep in the road. Photo by Brock Slaugh, Uintah County Surveyor

Yet nearly every property owner benefits from their work. It protects property rights, supports roads and public infrastructure, gives landowners confidence in their boundaries, and provides the foundation for responsible growth.

Surveying is often described as measuring land, but that only tells part of the story. The Surveyor's Office is preserving the evidence that defines where one property ends and another begins, ensuring those answers remain available not just today, but for the generations that follow.

And that's good news for Uintah County.

 

 

 

*Art for site button was done by Shari Blaukopf