Metes and Bounds: History and Legal Aspects of Land Surveying

Introduction

Anyone who has ever flown across the country can readily testify to the regular square and rectangular shapes that divide large tracts of land. This grid-like appearance did not just happen, of course, but was rather the result of legislation that tasked land surveyors with dividing the states into regularly sized segments, which were then sold or otherwise allocated. Despite innovations in technology that have made land surveying more efficient and accurate, the basic tools and techniques used by modern land surveyors were invented thousands of years ago in Babylon and Egypt and subsequently refined in Greece and Rome. In order to gain a better understanding of the legal aspects of land surveying today — including the resolution of boundary disputes and the ethics and moral responsibilities of modern land surveyors — this paper provides a review of the relevant peer-reviewed, scholarly, and organizational literature, followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

The history of land surveying is truly ancient, with its roots traceable to Babylon and Egypt (Dampier 1949) as well as Greece and Rome (Lewis 2001). According to Dampier, for instance, in Babylon around 2,500 BCE, "The beginnings of geometry illustrate the origin of an abstract science from the needs of everyday life, and are to be found in the rudimentary formulae and figures for land surveying. Plans of fields led to more complicated plans of towns, and even to a map of the world as then known" (1949:2). The practice of land surveying became more sophisticated over time and was applied with good effect to the needs of the people of Egypt. In this regard, Dampier adds that "Geometry, as its name implies, arose from the practical need of land-surveying, and this need was greatest, and was best met, in Egypt, where the inundations of the Nile periodically removed the landmarks" (1949:40).

Historical Aspects of Land Surveying

Two millennia later, land surveying in Rome reached a high level of accuracy and precision, and evidence of these efforts can still be found today. For example, Cuomo reports that "Roman land-surveying has left many archaeological remains; the most spectacular are large-scale grids, still visible in many parts of France, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, and especially Italy and North Africa" (2001:154). While the artifacts of these early land surveying efforts are most easily discernible when viewed from above, it is also possible to detect their remains on the ground. According to Cuomo, "On the ground, the lines are walls or roads, or remains of ditches which produce surface irregularities" (2001:154). Based on the regular outlines of these patterns, researchers have located stones that were used to demarcate land boundaries. Cuomo notes that boundary stones were used to "indicate the ownership or lease of a plot of land or its position with respect to some reference points" (2001:154).

The practice of land surveying by ancient Romans established many of the techniques that remain in use today. Grids were typically established by beginning with two designated main perpendicular axes — usually paths or roads — and were generally oriented to the four points of the compass, known as the decumanus (east–west) and the cardo (north–south) (Cuomo 2001). Subsequent lines were then laid out parallel and perpendicular to these grid lines at regular distances from the primary axes (Cuomo 2001). According to the Surveyors Historical Society, "Two learned Romans, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and Sextus Julius Frontinus, wrote of surveying practices in the Roman Empire at the time of Christ. Undoubtedly there were more works from their time, but many classical works were irretrievably lost in the destruction of the Alexandrian library in 642 A.D." (Roman surveying 2010:2).

One of the instruments used by Roman land surveyors was the groma. Cuomo reports that "The groma and other sighting instruments were used to keep the lines straight; measuring rods were used to ascertain distances; and sun-dials helped lay the cardo and decumanus in the right directions" (2001:155). The Romans termed the division of land using these early surveying instruments "centuriation." As explained by Cuomo, "The whole operation was known as 'centuriation' (the territory as 'centuriated') from centuria, a unit of measure corresponding to two hundred iugera, equivalent to two-thirds of an acre" (2001:155).

The grid-like patterns that are characteristic of modern land surveying therefore evolved from the practices developed by the ancient Babylonians and subsequently refined by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Indeed, these early land surveyors encountered many of the same types of challenges and constraints in laying out their grids that arise in modern practice. For example, Cuomo notes that "Physical or man-made obstacles, such as rivers or irregular borders or temples, often got in the way of the surveyor, but, on the whole, the centuriated territory became in effect a geometrical landscape" (2001:155). Interestingly, the legal aspects of land surveying during this period in history were directly related to the whims and moods of the ruling elite. As Cuomo adds, "The emperor often figured as the author of the survey, even when this had been in fact carried out by mensores [surveyors]. Clearly, surveying the land was a mark of power; it was up to Caesar to divide, parcel out and assign" (2001:155).

Notwithstanding this regal dimension, the practice of land surveying by Greeks and Romans served many of the same purposes that land surveying provides today. According to Lewis, land surveyors in ancient Greece and Rome "carried out relatively localized work on the ground surface. He might record the exact shape of an existing expanse of ground such as a field or an estate and calculate the areas enclosed. He might divide land into plots, normally rectangular, whether in the country for distribution to settlers, or in a town for setting out a grid of streets, or in a military context for laying out a fort" (2001:3). In fact, the connection between land surveying and military objectives became even more closely related over time, and by the early 18th century, military land surveyors were dividing the burgeoning United States into similar grid-like patterns. According to Smith, "The close relation between the history of topographic land surveying and the military should not go unnoticed. Military command accounted for most of the surveying of American public domain, and military organization dominated the field" (1976:310).

In the late 18th century, the U.S. Congress passed the Land Survey Ordinance of 1785, which set out the plan by which lands were to be disposed of, providing first of all for a system of surveys that became known as the "rectangular" or "rectilinear" system (Hockett 1940:267). The implications of this legislation were profound and far-reaching. According to Opie, "The Land Survey Ordinance of 1785 changed the western United States from formless wilderness into a remarkable national geometry of gigantic squares and rectangles varying from 640-acre sections to 23,040-acre townships" (1994:2). Over time, there was a need to further subdivide these minimum 640-acre township sections. As Opie adds, "Later the minimum tracts would go down to 320-acre half sections, to the famous 160-acre quarter sections, and even to 40-acre quarter-quarter sections. A continuously expanding gridiron would eventually crisscross the western two-thirds of the emerging United States" (1994:2).

Just as the ancient Romans centuriated large segments of land into legally definable components, the early practice of land surveying in the United States used almost identical methods. Hockett reports that "By this method a 'base line' is first laid out running due east and west. North and south across the base line, at intervals of six miles, meridians are marked off. Then lines parallel to the base line, six miles apart, mark off the surveyed area into blocks containing thirty-six square miles" (1940:265).

Each of these tracts of land is termed a "township"; in addition, each tier of townships between meridians is termed a "range" (Hockett 1940:265). The Land Survey Ordinance of 1785 also stipulated that the first survey would contain seven ranges as measured "along a base line running due west from the point where the Ohio River crosses the boundary of Pennsylvania" (Hockett 1940:265). Townships were further divided into sections containing one square mile each, and each of these sections could be further subdivided. As Hockett notes, "Each section can be subdivided into halves and quarters, each quarter into quarters, and so on indefinitely" (1940:265).

This land surveying method proved to be highly accurate, a feature that stood in sharp contrast to the methods used in some American colonies such as Virginia, which allowed the use of so-called "indiscriminate locations" — a practice that caused an enormous number of land boundary disputes (Hockett 1940). While the land surveying method established by the Land Survey Ordinance of 1785 was partially based on techniques that had evolved in New England, the origins of some of its specific features remain unclear (Hockett 1940). Notwithstanding this historical uncertainty, the methods set forth in the ordinance were so efficient and effective that the same techniques were applied to the rest of the country as westward expansion continued, eventually dividing all of the public lands in the United States (Hockett 1940).

According to Allen, a West Point graduate named First Lieutenant George Montague Wheeler is credited with much of this work. Based on his earlier land surveying activities in Nevada, Wheeler was inspired to apply the same methods to the rest of the American frontier. As Allen describes it, "When he submitted his report he suggested that the army extend its operations to embrace a general survey throughout the entire American West. The young army officer was called to Washington DC for consultation. The upshot was the creation of the Wheeler Survey in 1871" (1997:510). The official title of the Wheeler Survey was the "U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian," and it was based in large part on the need of the American military to navigate these previously uncharted territories (Allen 1997).

An adage has long advised that real estate is a good investment because "they are not making any more of it" — advice that held true during the time of the ancient Babylonians as well as today. Not surprisingly, disputes over the boundaries of land holdings have not been uncommon since land was first divided into definable segments. According to Black's Law Dictionary, land boundaries are "limits of land holdings described by linear measurements of the borders, or by points of the compass, or by stationary markers" (1991:878). By the 5th century CE, Cuomo reports that "Land-surveyors could act as main arbitrators in boundary disputes," but there were also laws on the books that provided for severe sanctions against land surveyors who failed to perform their jobs properly (2001:215). Similarly, the modern role of the land surveyor involves helping resolve boundary disputes. Pacione notes that "Boundary disputes can arise for technical reasons, sometimes because those involved in negotiations have insufficient training or have not consulted technical experts" (1999:364).

Boundary Disputes

Indeed, the survey lines created by land surveyors can be both the source of land boundary disputes and the means of resolving them. As Smith points out:

"It is in the nature of a survey line that it is at once both literal and symbolic. Literal, in that it can be at one, and only one, place on the surface of the earth. Symbolic (and civilized) in that, from the beginning of the history of surveying, its location will be set down in words and drawings on paper, thence securely deposited in a cadastre, or land-office, for perpetuity, there to be consulted by lawyers, judges, tenants, and landlords alike." (1976:304)

Furthermore, even the most sophisticated land surveying methods provide only an approximation of land boundaries. According to Ariel and Berger, "No measurement in surveying is correct. No matter how accurate the measuring instrument is, one can always strive for the next decimal place, or even whole numbers, depending on what is being measured. The only 'measurements' that can be correct are those such as counting the number of people in a room" (2006:77). Based on an analysis of boundary dispute resolutions during the second half of the 20th century, Pacione (1999) reports that about half of all boundary disputes are settled out of court, although some are referred for mediation or arbitration.

Conclusion

The research showed that land surveying emerged in response to the early human need to divide land into recognizable and legally definable constituents. Because land surveying is inextricably related to mathematics, it is not surprising that the same ancient peoples credited with developing the latter were also responsible for introducing important refinements into the former. The research also showed that, building on earlier practices used in Babylon and Egypt, Greek and then Roman land surveyors applied more sophisticated and standardized methods — traces of which can be found in the modern practice of land surveying. Because land as a resource is by definition scarce, one of the more important outcomes of this lengthy history of land surveying has been to provide a legal resource for landowners when boundary disputes arise. Finally, the research showed that modern land surveyors who belong to professional societies generally subscribe to a code of ethics for their profession. In the final analysis, it is reasonable to conclude that even with the introduction of further technological innovations, future land surveyors will continue to rely on the same ancient methods to some extent, and the day may well come when land surveyors are applying these same techniques to Mars and beyond.