# How did they make the old county survey maps? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 28, 2014, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797 "2014-10-28T21:52:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![El\_Zagna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@El\_Zagna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Zagna)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2014, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/1 "2014-10-28T21:52:57Z")
I’ve been doing some research which requires the use of some old county survey maps, and I have begun to wonder just how they went about making those maps. I am looking at maps for Falls County Texas dated 1855, 1868 and two from 1874, so it looks like they were updated on a regular basis. I assume that in most cases a new map would be based on the one before, but I’m not sure about that. [Here is an example](http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth88540/m1/1/?q=falls%20of%20the%20brazos%20river) of what I’m talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Ornery\_Bob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/da6949/32.png) [@Ornery\_Bob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ornery_Bob)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2014, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/2 "2014-10-28T22:21:43Z")
Maps of that sort were made by actually surveying the land. Nowadays people mostly use aerial photographs to generate maps, but before we had eyes in the sky, maps were made using conventional surveying techniques. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2014, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/3 "2014-10-28T23:00:21Z")
Property boundary maps are still made by doing land surveys because you can’t see property boundaries from the air. ---
**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2014, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/4 "2014-10-28T23:18:44Z")
A chain, a compass and a transit; manpower was cheap and tax income was based good surveys. ---
**Author:** ![fiddlesticks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddlesticks/32/18129_2.png) [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2014, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/5 "2014-10-28T23:30:46Z")
The Wikipedia article for the [Public Land Survey System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System) does a good job of explaining the mechanics of old-timey surveying. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/6 "2014-10-29T04:01:41Z")
I am finding it mind-boggling that people cannot imagine doing something as simple as measuring a distance without the investments of millions of dollars in satellites and equipment to interpret their signals. And it was possible to capture an image without electricity! Really! You don’t want to know about communication… I have worked a on survey crews, set up newspaper offset plates (and ripped off the AP/UPI teletype feed), and taken images, developed the film, and ran off prints on an enlarger. Somewhere, I still have the “Camera-Ready” layout of my 1982 resume. And was the only male in the history of my HS (1966) to take a typing class. Snicker, snicker, yourselves, klutzes! ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/7 "2014-10-29T04:08:10Z")
[George Washington himself was a public surveyor](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=738857), a prominent position during the settlement of this country. > [@](#): > > Prospective settlers in the Northern Neck were required to obtain a survey warrant from the Northern Neck Proprietary Office for a set amount of acreage in a specific location. The survey warrant, issued directly from the Northern Neck Land Office to the county surveyor, instructed the surveyor to make a “just and true” survey of the land, thereby officially determining and limiting its boundaries. Because they were responsible for laying out the land claims, surveyors had a unique role in Virginia society. Their appointments guaranteed a certain social prominence, since nearly all parties interested in gaining title to an area of land were required to deal with the surveyor. Surveyors were also among the best-educated Virginians and were often in the best position to purchase land for themselves. It was not unusual for surveyors to acquire large estates from the many opportunities they had to patent land in their own names. Additionally, their intimate knowledge of the land and official capacity as representatives of large land holders such as the Fairfaxes made their participation politically and practically essential to large land companies such as the Loyal Land Company of Virginia, the Ohio Company, and the Mississippi Land Company. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Zagna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@El\_Zagna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Zagna)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/8 "2014-10-29T06:12:00Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > I am finding it mind-boggling that people cannot imagine doing something as simple as measuring a distance without the investments of millions of dollars in satellites and equipment to interpret their signals. I find it mind boggling that you managed to read that into my question. I’m 65; I’m pre-digital myself. It seems to me that there are really two parts to this. One is the actual physical survey itself where you are setting stakes out in the field, and the other is drawing the maps. I would think that the map making could be done largely from the county records. Here is a description of a certain parcel of land, “…(begin) at a stake set on the river bank 465 varas (1,291.7 feet) below the falls; thence west 996 varas (2,766.7 feet); thence north 670 varas (I,861.1 feet); thence east 719 varas (1,997.2 feet) to the river; thence following the river downstream to the place of beginning.” If you can pinpoint the first stake, you can draw the rest without going into the field. But straight lines are easy. One thing you couldn’t map like that would be the contours of rivers, streams and other natural formations. It’s the course of the Brazos River that I’m particularly interested in. My guess is that they took measurements in the field and then transposed those measurements onto he map. But how accurate was that? All things considered, surveying an entire county had to be an onerous task. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/9 "2014-10-29T06:17:58Z")
Even harder to do elevations and topographical maps. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/10 "2014-10-29T11:18:44Z")
You might like to read [this](http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/overview/history.html) about the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain. We were _“squeezed between rebellion in Scotland and war with France when King George II commissioned a military survey of the Scottish highlands in 1746”_ and _“In June 1791, the Board purchased a huge new Ramsden theodolite, and surveyors began mapping southern Britain from a baseline that Roy himself had measured several years earlier.”_ in 1841, the Ordnance Survey Act gave them a legal right to ‘enter into and upon any land’ for survey purposes so that they could complete a 6" to the mile map of the entire country. All this with theodolites and chains. Many of those very early maps like the 3rd Duke of Richmond’s map of his 72 square mile estate made in the 1790s. He was the founder of the Ordnance Survey. As an aside, and to demonstrate why accurate maps are important, it is likely that the lack of them was a major contributor to Napoleon’s defeats in the Peninsular war. They were using maps with non-existent roads drawn on, because the map maker thought that there ought to be a road. Not good when you are dragging artillery through wild and mountainous countryside. ---
**Author:** ![Edward\_The\_Head](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ce73a5/32.png) [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/11 "2014-10-29T11:42:28Z")
> [@El\_Zagna](#): > > But straight lines are easy. One thing you couldn’t map like that would be the contours of rivers, streams and other natural formations. It’s the course of the Brazos River that I’m particularly interested in. My guess is that they took measurements in the field and then transposed those measurements onto he map. But how accurate was that? Even the curves in the river and such are not that difficult to do. Have one guy with a theodolite, another with the rod. The guy with the rod moves, you can get the distance from that so each curve could be plotted out from a few measurements. It might not be exact, but it will be pretty close. > [@](#): > > All things considered, surveying an entire county had to be an onerous task. That depends, once it’s done once what more is there to do? Unless someone splits up land there’s not a lot of reason to redo the survey, just erase the old land owner’s name and write in a new one. All that said, what do you know of the map? If it was created by the county or the state then it’s probably pretty accurate, if it was created by some company to make a quick buck, which was very common in the 1850-1880s, then probably not so great. Those companies would send out someone with a large wheel that calculated the distance, they would stop at farms and homes say they are making a map and “hey, would you want your name on the map? Only cost you a couple of bucks.” They weren’t that interested in being that accurate, close, but not that great. I’ve done some studies of those kinds of maps and the rivers and roads do not match up to what they would really look like. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/12 "2014-10-29T12:52:16Z")
> [@Edward\_The\_Head](#): > > All that said, what do you know of the map? If it was created by the county or the state then it’s probably pretty accurate, if it was created by some company to make a quick buck, which was very common in the 1850-1880s, then probably not so great. Those companies would send out someone with a large wheel that calculated the distance, they would stop at farms and homes say they are making a map and “hey, would you want your name on the map? Only cost you a couple of bucks.” They weren’t that interested in being that accurate, close, but not that great. I’ve done some studies of those kinds of maps and the rivers and roads do not match up to what they would really look like. That last part was a problem in the American west. Say a bunch of people were flooding into the newly created town of Denver Colorado. Someone shows on a map the “official” layout. A person buys land which should be right on a major street corner. Only to find out later the map was wrong and they bought something right in the middle of the street and now their land claim is worthless. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/13 "2014-10-29T13:51:09Z")
Maps then did not need to be accurate. Some state lines in the USA are several miles off what is now known to be the coordinates that legally define the state. There is also settled law that boundaries, once generally recognized, remain in force even if improved technology later shows them to be misplaced. Hence, the odd exclave of St. Martin Parish, Louisina. So the survey of Falls County became locked in as the actual boundaries on the ground, and all modern satellite mapping has done is to show us how wrong surveyors were then. Still, surveying was often miraculously accurate. The early railroad tunnels through the Alps were dug starting at both ends, to meet in the center, and they missed by less than a meter of meeting dead on, miles from the starting points. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/14 "2014-10-29T14:41:37Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > …And was the only male in the history of my HS (1966) to take a typing class. Snicker, snicker, yourselves, klutzes! \ Me also Class of’66! I didn’t take typing, because back then, if a girl took typing, that doomed her to be a secretary. Who knew that one day everybody-- even executives-- would willingly learn to type on a keyboard. My late H was nine years older than me and still did not know his way around a keyboard at his list job around 1993. He hand wrote out stuff for a secretary to type. Apologies for digression. Exits stage left. ---
**Author:** ![GaryM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garym/32/241_2.png) [@GaryM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaryM)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-they-make-the-old-county-survey-maps/702797/15 "2014-10-29T15:29:28Z")
The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India was Mapped and Everest was Named by John Keay is interesting if you want to learn more about early survey techniques.