Parcel Maps in Brentwood, CA

Brentwood is agricultural land in transition, and its parcel mapping problems are unlike anywhere else in Contra Costa County. Many of the older ag parcels were never part of a recorded subdivision at all — they are described by metes and bounds, written generations ago, sometimes referencing monuments, fences, and irrigation features that have long since moved or vanished. Retracing those descriptions is genuine boundary surveying: we pull the chain of deeds, search for original monuments, reconcile conflicting calls, and establish the exterior boundary before any division is designed. Layered over the boundaries are the irrigation easements and ditch rights that made the orchards possible — encumbrances that must be located, mapped, and either preserved or formally addressed on any new parcel map, because a new lot bisected by an active irrigation easement is a problem you want to discover during feasibility, not escrow.

Much of our Brentwood work is family land held for generations: parents dividing acreage among children, siblings partitioning an inherited orchard, or an owner carving a homesite from cropland before selling the remainder. The Subdivision Map Act parcel map — up to four parcels — is usually the right instrument, processed through City of Brentwood planning with the tentative map, conditions, and final map, then recorded with the Contra Costa County Recorder in Martinez after County Surveyor review. We set durable monuments on the new corners and perpetuate existing ones as Business and Professions Code §8771 requires, which matters enormously on land the family intends to hold for another generation.

Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner makes the fieldwork efficient at agricultural scale: one mobilization recovers boundary evidence and captures a survey-grade topographic base — barns, wells, ditches, driveways, grade — across acreage in a fraction of conventional time. That single dataset supports the tentative map, the easement exhibits, and the eventual building permits on the new lots. If you are weighing a split, start with our feasibility review; on Brentwood ag land, the record research and easement picture drive everything that follows.