Monument Preservation in Berkeley, CA

Berkeley’s street grid dates to the early 1900s and earlier, and the monuments set in that era are still the backbone of boundary work across the city. On narrow Berkeley lots where setback questions come down to fractions of a foot, a centerline monument at an intersection is often the controlling evidence for an entire block. When a repaving program, sewer main replacement, or undergrounding project trenches through that intersection, Business & Professions Code §8771 requires that a licensed surveyor reference the monument and file a Corner Record with the Alameda County Surveyor before it is disturbed — and that it be reset, with a second Corner Record, after construction. Skip that step and the block’s best evidence is gone; recovering it means a retracement that costs far more than the preservation work would have.

We provide corridor-wide monument preservation for public agencies, utility districts, and contractors working in Berkeley: research of existing Corner Records and maps, field search and referencing of every monument in the limits of work, pre-construction filings with Alameda County, and post-construction resets. The hills add urgency — switchback streets, shared driveways, and old retaining walls in the Hillside Overlay mean monuments are sparser and harder to replace, and the Hayward fault’s trace through the city means some monuments have measurable historic displacement that is itself worth documenting before it is erased.

Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner earns its keep on these corridors. In the same mobilization that ties out the monuments, we scan the street — pavement, curbs, walls, and every monument in its surface context — producing a millimeter-grade point cloud. That record supports defensible resets, gives the city or district pre-construction surface documentation for the whole corridor, and eliminates return trips when a question comes up mid-project.