Exploration & Navigation
James Cook: The Surveyor Before the Famous Voyages
Before the Pacific made him famous, James Cook spent years charting Newfoundland. Those coastal surveys reveal the patient mapmaker…
Featured Story
Introducing the Lost Surveyor Map Archive
A digital map archive is taking shape at Lost Surveyor, with Florida at its center, carefully attributed sources and tools for looking closely at the history on each sheet.
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Boundaries & Land Rights
Benjamin Banneker: Looking to the Stars, Helping Shape a Capital
A Maryland farmer, astronomer, and almanac maker brought his skills to the new capital’s boundary survey—and used his pen…
Boundaries & Land Rights
An Old Fence, a Missing Element: Hearn Properties v. Cruce
A Madison County fence dispute shows why the history of a line matters, and why its age alone could…
Society & Culture
Four Million Acres: The Scale and Legacy of the Disston Purchase
Four million acres for $1 million: the scale of the Disston purchase and how its land, companies and investments…
Boundaries & Land Rights
Record the Sketch: Why a Legal Description Needs Its Drawing
When a sketch has already been prepared with a legal description, recording only the words leaves useful work behind.…
Boundaries & Land Rights
Andrew Ellicott: Drawing America’s Southern Line
From Washington’s future streets to the border of Spanish Florida, Andrew Ellicott turned national ambitions into lines on the…
Boundaries & Land Rights
Cooley’s Essay: Why Better Measurements Don’t Automatically Move Boundaries
Thomas Cooley’s enduring essay asks surveyors to recover established boundaries, investigate the evidence, and recognize the limits of a…
Tools & Technology
GPS Modernization Is More Than a Satellite: What GAO’s New Audit Uncovered
A surveyor using a GNSS receiver.
Measuring the World
Clocks as Surveying Instruments: Relativistic Geodesy and the Shape of Earth
Optical atomic clocks can sense differences in gravitational potential, opening a path toward measuring physical height through the rate…
The Map Archive
101 maps
Explore historical maps, survey records and remarkable places from around the world.
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