Message from Jim

With our minds set on a destination, we often forget that the journey is of greater value. Goals and expectations achieved are special, but the road traveled presents much more knowledge, wisdom, self-confidence, kindness, and humility than any destination reached. In fact, any destination obtained is just a step along the overall journey. Most are consumed with our estimated time of arrival and forget that each moment which passes without value is gone forever. An equal or larger blunder is the lost respect and understanding of the past.

As a land surveyor, a strong understanding of the past and history of community, county, and state is of immense value. As we are required to journey back in time in our research efforts, we often identify the namesakes of the many local streets, buildings, neighborhoods, etc. To do this well, a moderate amount of historian is in each land surveyor’s blood. As with the pertinent operative deeds in land surveying defining intent of land transfers, history does much of the same for a community or region.

Most will agree with Portland's many top ten rankings in various polls, which includes the #1 slot in a 2009 Forbes magazine article, “America's Most Livable Cities”, but is it because of our future or our past? For me, past history is the foundation making Portland extremely desirable.

Did you know that James Deering was one of the first Portland merchants to travel to the Neck from his Falmouth farm (now USM-Portland and vicinity)? The City of Deering was originally a portion of Westbrook, and later merged into Portland. They were all originally part of ancient Falmouth. The Presumpscot Mills were accessible due to the construction of a road in 1735 from Stroudwater Village to Saccarappa (Westbrook) to carry large mast pines to the Fore River and floated to Clark's Point.

Featured Project

Much progress has been made on the Headstone Rehabilitation Project at the Maine Veterans' Memorial Cemetery in Augusta, since its commencement in 2011.

The Objective

Due to the natural settling of soil, the headstones have settled or are sinking below the surface of the ground. In a generous effort to preserve the integrity of these memorial sites, we are field locating around 6,500 headstones prior to their temporary removal. After the removal of each headstone, compaction of the soil will be performed and then each stone will be placed in its original location, with minor adjustments made to create perfect alignment of each row and column. In order to ensure accuracy, we are surveying with quality GPS equipment to create coordinates for each grave marker, taking photos, and recording the name and death dates of each.