Parcel Maps in El Cerrito, CA

El Cerrito's hillside east side presents a boundary problem most flatland cities never see: the ground itself moves. In the Blakemont area near the Kensington border, a slow-moving landslide has been creeping for decades, and across the upper slopes the combination of soil creep and the nearby Hayward fault means fences, retaining walls, and even survey monuments migrate downhill over time. The postwar homes on these slopes were fenced generations ago, and today the fence and the deed line frequently disagree — sometimes by feet. A lot line adjustment under the Subdivision Map Act is often the cleanest cure: rather than litigating or living with the discrepancy, adjacent owners adjust the record boundary to a sensible, agreed location, and the adjustment records with the Contra Costa County Recorder. Where our retracement finds monuments displaced or destroyed by ground movement, Business and Professions Code §8771 requires their perpetuation by record, and we file accordingly.

Some of El Cerrito's larger hillside parcels can also support a split into two lots, and the feasibility analysis follows the standard sequence — zoning minimum lot size, frontage, legal access, then the practical test of driveway grades and buildable area on a slope. Divisions of four or fewer lots proceed by tentative parcel map with conditions of approval, then a final parcel map examined and recorded in Contra Costa County. On creeping ground, the City may condition approval on geotechnical review, and a defensible existing-conditions record matters.

That record is where our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner is decisive. One mobilization captures the slope surface, walls, fences, and structures in a millimeter-grade point cloud — simultaneously the topographic base for the tentative map, the evidence for the boundary resolution, and a dated baseline that later monitoring scans can be compared against if the slope keeps moving.