Near midnight on August 4th, 1984, the M/V Wellwood, a 400-foot steel-hulled freighter, struck Molasses Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. This wasn’t good for the Wellwood, and it was disastrous for Molasses Reef; 1,280 square meters of coral reef habitat was Molasses Reef / Wellwood Restoration Site Monument utterly destroyed, reduced to pulverized coral rubble.

In June of 1989, a team of eight men ─ formally called The 1989 Mt. McKinley Global Positioning Expedition ─ set out from a base camp to perform one of the most unusual survey projects the world has ever seen. Their mission was to verify, by the most sophisticated satellite positioning methods, the true summit elevation and position of the highest mountain peak on the North American continent, Denali. [Mt. McKinley was renamed with its original name, Denali, in 2015]. The project involved hundreds of hours of planning, thousands of dollars in costs, the use of the most up to date global positioning equipment to track several special military communication satellites orbiting the earth . . . and one Berntsen Survey Monument, which was placed precisely at the summit.

At the beginning of nearly every autumn season, I set out on vacation, hoping to see new places and learn new things. I often seek out new territory as I did this year, but I also found myself trekking back to a much favored area in Utah: Zion National Park. Although I’ve been there in the past for sightseeing and hiking its impressive rock trails, it is always a joy to visit. And this time, I’d like to especially thank Leo Snow.

National Surveyor’s Week is an opportunity to highlight the many benefits of a career in surveying and to celebrate the accomplishments of the surveying community.  Over the past year, I’ve been highlighting the work of colonial surveyors, from John Morton to Thomas Jefferson. These early surveyor’s contributions extend far beyond surveying boundaries – their background helped them to literally lay the foundation of our nation.