19 Header Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Member Spotlight boss comes up and says, ‘Hey, you’re gonna go work with this guy.’ It happened to be their engineer and he was laying out a railroad line into one of their reload yards. So I realized, hey, you get paid to do this?” After college he went to work at Stimson Lumber Company in Forest Grove. The economy was in a major recession in 1981 and there were not a lot of forestry jobs. The Stimson job started out as a summer position but ended up being one that lasted for eight years. Stimson didn’t have a registered engineer or surveyor on staff and Cone was looking for the opportunity to obtain dual licensure as an engineer and surveyor. “And then I got an opportunity to go to work for Boise Cascade down in Medford.” Boise Cascade had a registered engineer on staff, so that’s what led him to get his engineering license first, in 2001. He got his survey license later, in 2009. During all of those years with Boise Cascade, Cone was doing all the contracting for the survey work for woods operations and had the chance to work with surveyors. In 2005, Boise Cascade sold their timberland to Forest Capital, which at the time operated a sort of real estate investment trust model. “I wasn’t interested in continuing to work for them at that point so I started my own business,” Cone says. Cone started working with one of the local surveyors he was already working with, and started doing survey work under his tutelage, and got his license. In 2011, he saw an advertisement for the position of the state forest engineer for the Oregon Department of Forestry. “When I read the job announcement, I said, ‘that’s me!’ so I applied for the job and got it.” The department manages around 700,000 acres of timberland to provide the greatest permanent value for Oregonians. “In my position I get involved with a variety of projects involving forest roads, recreation facilities, and property boundaries,” he says. One particularly memorable job tied into a stone set by court-ordered survey out in the Niagara Township in the North Santiam Valley area in 1899, which was written about in A Casebook Of Oregon Donation Land Claims by Albert White. “After the Beachie Creek Fire in 2020, we got called out to survey that line again, so that was interesting to retrace something I’d read about,” he recalls. Cone is active with PLSO as the chair of the Scholarship Committee, and is also a board member for OSBEELS. Cone saw a vacancy on the Scholarship Committee and stepped up to fill it, because he believes in supporting the profession and encouraging younger people to become involved. While leadership positions can sometimes create conflicts with competing priorities, the Scholarship Committee allows him to contribute and support the group’s important work. Cone strongly believes that being a member of PLSO has benefitted him. “It gives me the opportunity to pick up the phone and call somebody when I have an issue that I’m working on that I might need some advice on,” he says. “And just seeing people present surveys they’ve worked on at the chapter meetings and going to the conference gives you an opportunity to learn and it all improves your professionalism.” Cone is retiring in 2024 and is considering options to stay involved in forest engineering and land surveying but only on a part time basis. This will give him a chance to do more of the things he enjoys, such as woodworking and elk hunting, although he jokes that he is mostly a “vegetarian hunter.” “Elk hunting is my annual escape for a week and a half or so, but I am still pursuing filling my first tag,” he says. He enjoys making furniture like dressers and beds or whatever the household has a need for, in his woodworking shop, and at the time of our phone call, was busy making new cabinetry for the kitchen of his home. He has done other projects like making a grandfather clock for his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Daren Cone presenting at the 100-year OSBEELS anniversary event.
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