Land Surveyor in Sonoma

Sonoma is built around the eight-acre Plaza that General Mariano Vallejo laid out in 1835, the largest plaza in California and a National Historic Landmark, with Mission San Francisco Solano, the last of the twenty-one California missions, on its north side. That history is a survey problem as much as a tourist attraction. The town grid and the surrounding countryside descend from Mexican-era ranchos whose boundaries were described by natural features and later resolved through federal patent, so retracement here means working back through layers of record: patents, early county maps, ranch subdivisions, and modern parcel maps, then finding whatever monuments survive on the ground. Fences, driveways, and vineyard rows on the valley floor rarely match those lines, and the discrepancies are usually old.

Outside the city limits the work continues in unincorporated Sonoma County. The Springs corridor north along Highway 12, through Boyes Hot Springs, Fetters Hot Springs, Agua Caliente, and El Verano, is county jurisdiction, as are the vineyard and estate parcels running up Sonoma Valley toward Glen Ellen and Kenwood. Records of Survey and Corner Records are examined by the Sonoma County Surveyor and recorded with the Clerk-Recorder in Santa Rosa. Our terrestrial laser scanner is the tool of choice for the valley's buildings: adobe and masonry walls around the Plaza that are neither straight nor plumb, tasting rooms and hospitality buildings being renovated on tight seasonal schedules, and winery production space where equipment leaves no tolerance for error. Deliverables are registered point clouds, scan-to-CAD plans and elevations, and BIM-ready models.