BY Vicki Hunt Budge
It was the compass and chain
that won the west, not the six-shooter!
This quote by David Garcelon captured my attention while
doing research for my Sweet Historical Western Romance, Her Believing Heart, book 1 in The Surveyor’s Daughters Series.
For years, I have been interested in the surveying process
because of my husband’s family of engineers. His father was a highway engineer
for the state of Idaho, and his grandfather was an engineer and surveyor who
oversaw the construction of the courthouse, hospital, churches, and the flour
mill, in a small southern Idaho community. Grandpa Budge’s 120-year old transit
and tripod have stood in our living room for years. You can’t dust an antique
piece of equipment like this without wondering about the everyday lives of
those who used it.
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| Abraham Lincoln, Surveyor |
Land surveying has always been an essential part of property
development and land ownership in the settlement of the western states.
Surveying makes it possible to have accurate maps and property lines using the complex
elements of engineering, geometry, physics, and mathematics.
Stephen E. Ambrose, in his acclaimed book, Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who
Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, called pioneer surveyors
the true “…mountain men, adventurous, capable of taking care of themselves,
ready for whatever the wilderness threw at them…Nothing could be done until
they had laid out and marked the line.”
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| Survey Crew Camp, 1800s |
The early surveyors required the skills of a woodsman to
blaze trails, mineralogist skills to document the soil structure or important
minerals, and marksmanship to obtain fresh food and defend against hostile
Indians. Many surveyors lost their lives in skirmishes with the native tribes,
as the tribes considered these European “measurers” the main cause for losing
their land.
The mapping of the western territories was interrupted by
the Civil War, but in 1867 four great surveys were put in motion: a geological
survey of natural resources along the route of the railroad being built, a
major survey of the western territories, a survey of the unknown canyonlands in
the southwest, and a survey to create a military map of the southwestern area
and to select sites for military posts. Clarence King (1842-1901), the first
director of the U. S. Geological Survey, claimed that, “Eighteen sixty-seven
marks . . . a turning point, when science ceased to be dragged in the dust of
rapid exploration and took a commanding position in the professional work of
the country.”
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| Honoring surveyors is this statue at the Texas RangersMuseum in Waco, Texas |
In the meantime, thousands of smaller surveys were taking
place for mines, towns, roads, and canals as people moved westward. In Route Surveys, my father-in-law’s old
college instruction book for prospective surveyors, Harry Rubey includes a list
of clothing and personal supplies with which to provide members of a survey
crew. In addition, he suggests the “Chief of Party” check availability of
forage for animals, and housing and boarding of men. “If in farm houses, the
spacing and capacity, if in tents, the number of tents necessary and the proper
design to withstand storms, animals, and insects.
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| County Surveyors, an elected position in the 1800s |
One thing was for sure according to James R. Dorsey, a land,
boundary, and title consultant. Without surveyors, “there would have been no
migration west—at least nothing orderly.”
He says that without the orderly location of land by
surveyors, range wars would have been worse than they were. No government land
was sold, no towns or cities platted, no railroads, canals, irrigation
channels, roads or mines were developed without surveyors going in first.
As the western territories developed into states, many
surveys took years to complete. Others were of a shorter nature, allowing
surveyors to work part-time like the father in my Surveyor’s Daughters Series. In
this series, Mr. Gardner is a homesteader as well as a surveyor, and two of his
eight daughters always go along to cook for the survey crew. Will one of his
daughters want to tackle the rugged life of a surveyor when she grows up? That
remains to be seen as the series progresses.
Vicki, I think George Washington was a surveyor but I didn't know Abraham Lincoln had been. Best wishes with HER BELIEVING HEART.
ReplyDeleteSeveral prominent Americans were surveyor's. I should have included that! Thanks, Caroline for your awesome help!
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