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The Oregon Surveyor
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Vol. 40, No. 2
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Surveyor, I just had to get
permission to reprint it in our
magazine. After all, Chuck was
working in Oregon, so I felt a
certain sense of ownership, if for no other reason
than the territory wherein he was working. I’ve been
following Chuck’s footsteps for the past seven years
on a project in southwestern Washington. While
researching records and evaluating field evidence, I
have come to a full understanding of his accomplish-
ments in the retracement arena throughout his
career, which extends back to the 1960’s when he
was just starting out as a Dept. of Natural Resources
employee working in the limits of the historical Yacolt
Burn within Clark County. For those of you who’ve
never had the pleasure of retracing GLO surveys in
areas that were devastated by major wildfires, such
work raises significant and interesting challenges.
I have now had the pleasure of working in both
the Tillamook Burn and the Yacolt Burn and I can
attest to the value of some of the lessons those
areas have presented to me. Chuck represents
something of a “kindred spirit” in that regard so
you can imagine my excitement when I finally got
to meet him at our recently completed conference.
For the “young” surveyor, Chuck’s experiences are a
great resource and I’m glad he’s been willing to share
them. I encourage any of our readers to feel free to
contact Chuck through me if you have a particularly
“nettling” retracement problem for which you feel a
little “senior” experience might help. I look forward
to getting him to share some further experiences
through the pages of this magazine.
By Greg Crites, PLS
To Boldly Go Where
Surveyors Have Gone Before
From the Editor
I
n this issue, we’re focusing on both the front end
and back end of our profession. Samantha Tanner
shares with us her perspective on what it means to
be a “young” surveyor. What is important to me in
her article is her emphasis on finding mentors! She
relates how some of her projects have been “bumpy”
because she’s learning as she goes, something
we’ve all experienced, especially when we were
just starting out in our own sole proprietorships. I
remember thinking, okay, I’ve got my license, now
what do I do? I will freely admit issues arose that
were beyond my experience. This is where mentoring
plays a hugely significant role. When I was in school,
they didn’t teach me how to evaluate evidence in
the field, a skill that was critically important when
doing cadastral surveys. It was only through working
under the guidance of my mentors that I developed
those skillsets. To this day I can still picture some of
those “ah hah” moments early in my career when I
recovered original evidence from past GLO surveys.
As any surveyor will attest, there are few projects
that garner such “elation.” For the “young” surveyors
among us, there are a few of us “old” dogs that would
dearly love to mentor on recovering original evidence.
I can’t recall a single surveyor I know that doesn’t get
all “smarmy” when they think about some of those
amazing “finds” they had during their early careers.
I also can’t think of one surveyor who won’t admit
that doing cadastral surveys is probably their most
enjoyable pursuit!
Speaking of pursuits, when I read Chuck Whitten’s
article in the March/April 2016 issue of The American