Early one muggy morning in April, Geomatics students in the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences gathered at UF’s Austin Cary Forest. Standing in a semi-circle around Professor Jack Breed, the students watched as Breed set up a traveling museum of sorts in the bed of his pickup truck. On display were various artifacts from the early days of Florida surveying, when the United States government set out to divvy up lands it had acquired from Spain.
Professor Breed’s class, SUR 4430 Surveying and Mapping Practice, prepares undergraduate students to enter the workforce as professional surveyors and geographers. Over the course of the semester, students conduct “lot and block” boundary surveys, boundary surveys within sectionalized lands, and water boundary surveys. During this field trip to Austin Cary Forest, the students will retrace the original boundary lines of Austin Cary Forest, established in the 1830s and 40s as part of the United States Public Lands Survey System. The day’s assignment not only gives students experience conducting retracement surveys, which they will do many times over the course of their careers, it shows them in a very tangible way how closely their profession is linked to the past.
“As professional surveyors and mappers, we are stewards of one of Florida’s primary economic resources, the orderly ownership and clear title to real property,” says Professor Breed. “Given the technological advancements in measurement science, knowledge of past procedures and technology of land title descriptions is critical in maintaining an orderly cadastre for the future.”
And so, to properly establish today’s land title boundaries, Breed’s students must literally follow in the footsteps of the original surveyors.
The Public Lands Survey System (PLSS) was created in 1785 to divide up parcels of public land in the U.S., using a six-mile-square grid system. Boundaries in North-Central Florida were established by Henry Washington, a distant relative of George Washington (who was also a surveyor before he became the first American president). Henry Washington and his crew used chains and compasses to set the corners of each grid across the state, with a reference in each Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest quadrant. This grid system is still the reference for surveys in Florida and other states in the PLSS. Because Austin Cary Forest has remained relatively undisturbed for the last century and a half, it is a much better site for retracement studies than urban areas, where original survey markers have often been destroyed or replaced.
Professor Breed and his students used both historical field notes and modern surveying technology to locate the original survey points in Austin Cary Forest. Equipped with steel tapes, compasses, and Schonstedt magnetic locators (which act like metal detectors), the students were able to locate a spot where the original witness tree – the object Washington and his crew had used to mark a corner of the boundary line – probably stood. Sweating in the late-morning sun, students took turns wielding machetes and shovels to clear and dig the area. They were looking for a discoloration in the soil table that would indicate organic matter from the tree that once grew there. Not long into the dig, one of the shovels struck an iron rod driven through an especially dark area of soil; telling the students that someone had previously discovered the location of the witness tree and marked it. It was more than enough evidence to show they were standing in the exact spot that Henry Washington had once stood in his effort to carve out the parcel of land that became Austin Cary Forest.
Professor Breed’s Surveying and Mapping Practice class is, for many students, a final milestone before they graduate. SFFGS’s Geomatics program is the oldest of its kind in the Southeastern U.S., and our bachelor’s degree program is the only ABET-accredited program in the U.S. Breed’s class in particular is aimed at giving students a window into the surveying industry and the professional and regulatory environments surrounding it. Many Geomatics graduates have gone on to lead top surveying firms in Florida and the country.
For more information about our programs (which are based in Gainesville, Fort Lauderdale, Plant City, and Apopka); with online options available as well), please see our website.
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