PLSO The Oregon Surveyor Mar/Apr 2019

25 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Featured Article Robert Hofland and Plat Drafting R obert (Bob) Hofland was a drafts- man for the GLO/BLM for many years in their Portland office. He was the only person on staff doing this type of work. He also did all of the re- view and approving of mineral surveys. In his drafting capacity, he placed his ini- tials, REF, in the lower left corner of the plat, which has been continued to this day with all BLM plats. A few years ago, Dick Hofland, Bob’s son and owner of Hofland SurveyMonuments, provided me with several old books that he had from his father’s collection. One of those is the BLM’s Standard Field Ta- bles, better known as the “Red Book” because of its color. I was recently look- ing at it and noticed in the front was Bob’s name and the date he probably received this book. In the back was a notation of a township, range, and sections of a plat that he had drafted. The graphics show both the front and back pages with this information. What was interesting was his note that the plat contained “4600 hatcures (sic)”. I didn’t count them, but it looks like he spent quite a bit of time placing them on the plat. I suspect the hachures were derived from a USGS quadrangle map of the area and interpreted by Bob for the construction of the plat.  x