"The measurement of dimensional relationships, as of horizontal distances, elevations, directions, and angles, on the earth's surface especially for use in locating property boundaries, construction layout, and mapmaking." - Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Mount Rushmore, featuring 3 surveyors and another guy. Said by some to be the second oldest profession, land surveying has a long and storied past. In relatively recent history, in 1803 Merriweather Lewis and William Clark were directed by United States President Thomas Jefferson (who was himself a surveyor) to investigate the Pacific Northwest in seach of the Northwest Passage:
"… The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it’s course & communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.
Beginning at the mouth of the Missouri, you will take observations of latitude & longitude, at all remarkable points on the river, & especially at the mouths of rivers, at rapids, at islands & other places & objects distinguished by such natural marks & characters of a durable kind, as that they may with certainty be recognized hereafter. the courses of the river between these points of observation may be supplied by the compass, the log–line & by time, corrected by the observations themselves. the variations of the compass too, in different places, should be noticed.
… Your observations are to be taken with great pains & accuracy, to be entered distinctly, & intelligibly for others as well as yourself, to comprehend all the elements necessary…."
Excerpts from the Diaries of Thomas Jefferson
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