A mapmaker? Hasn't the world been mapped already?

When people ask Dode or me what he does for a living, we tell them that he works in the mapping department of the Tulalip Tribes.  We often get the following response, "Hasn't the world already been mapped?"  We always smile and say, "Yes the world has been mapped, we know where all the continents are, but the kind of mapping Dode does is more detailed than that."

We're all familiar with using paper maps on road trips.  If you were traveling through Washington and trying to find a certain address, you might need a Washington State Map to get you close to the town and another city map to get you to the address.  Now days we all realize how useful "live" maps like google maps are.  You can zoom in and out on the map.  You can choose to view the map as a traditional map, a satellite view, or a street view.  Someone had to make that happen.  Enter the map maker.  Dode is creating living maps of the Tulalip Reservation.  And, because he's a surveyor, the maps he's creating are going to be accurate!  Once the maps are complete, someone can choose to view the whole reservation with just the infrastructure they're interested in showing.  Maybe they want the water meters shown.  They can zoom in on just a few water meters.  They can click on individual water meters and get information like, "identifying number, date last visited, photo".

He is helping to create a huge living map that will eventually include all the infrastructure on the reservation:  roads, sewers, water lines, water meters, fiber optic cables, man holes, utility vaults etc.  All those things are targets of his research.  Some things he can go out and physically locate just by looking for it.  The water meter project was one of those.  (details here) Some things are hidden from view, like sewer lines.  To get the information for those takes research.  Dode has a lot of places he looks while doing his research: county records, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Services, National Archives, other surveyors, timber companies, departments within the reservation.  He uses the information he gleans from his research to visit the location and identify if things actually are in the location they were intended to be placed in.

Now that I've maybe convinced you that there is still a need for mapmakers in the world, I'm going to share a surprising fact that is not unique to the Tulalip Reservation.  The boundary of the reservation still needs to be identified.  (Which means the boundary of the city of Marysville still needs identified too!)

You could ask anyone who's lived in Snohomish County for a while where the Tulalip Reservation is, and they can tell you "West of Marysville".  Ok, but where is the actual boundary?  The western boundary of the reservation is the Puget Sound, but where does the land end and the Puget Sound begin?  Obviously it is where the water starts.  But is that at high tide or low tide?  Is that yesterday's tides or today's tides?  The treaty that created the Tulalip Reservation said the reservation would extend to the low water mark.  There is no legal definition for the low water mark, in fact the tides don't leave a mark on the shoreline at the low water line like they do the high water line.  Dode found a court case for another reservation that had the same language about the low water mark.  That court case stated the reservation boundary extends to the extreme low tide line (the lowest low tide in 18.6 years).  But, the actual location of the lowest tide is always moving due to shifting sandbars.  In some places the lowest tide is only 50 feet from the top of the beach and other places the lowest tide is a quarter mile from the top of the beach.

The Tulalip Tribes owns the beaches, but individuals own the land above the beaches.  The line separating the Tribe's ownership from the individual ownership is more problematic.  Everyone who has beach front access wants to build something along the water (bulkheads, piers, docks, etc).   The line that separates the ownerships is the average high tide as measured over an 18.6 year period.  That is a little too long for people to wait, so the individuals and the Tribes keep fighting over how far out individuals can build and still be on their own property.

While you might think identifying and mapping the western boundary of the tribe sounds complicated, with determining where the low tide is, it is the eastern boundary where things really get ugly.  Most people erroneously believe that the freeway (I-5) is the Eastern boundary of the reservation.  The reservation was created in 1875.  The freeway didn't come along until 1969 and they did not follow the eastern boundary of the reservation.

The United States government defined the reservation boundary in the 1870's by placing monuments every quarter mile around the reservation, then dedicated all the land inside the monuments as the Tulalip Reservation.  In other words, the boundary of the reservation is defined by connecting all the monuments together with a long line (just like doing a dot to dot drawing).  Establishing the boundary of the reservation relies on finding those original monuments placed in the 1870's.  Dode has done extensive research to find where the original monuments might have been placed and has taken numerous trips into the field to locate them.  You can read more about that here.  There hasn't been good evidence of why people have placed property corners in different locations as the land abutting the reservation has been sold off.  Complicating matters is the fact that the surveyors on the reservation used a different system to divide up the land than what was used on adjoining parcels (as required by federal law but that's a whole other mind bending story).  To complicate it even further the original survey done in the 1870's was done fraudulently.

Some people ask, "But won't he work his way out of a job?"  Highly unlikely.  It will take years to add all the infrastructure to the living map they are creating and to resolve the boundary of the reservation.  Even when that's complete, he would only work his way out of a job IF the land remained the way it is right now forever.  That just doesn't happen.  Property is continually being developed, divided, changed.  With those changes come changes in infrastructure, changes in property corners, changes that need mapped.  As long as individuals continue to live and work with the land on the reservation, there will be a need for up to date maps.  As long as people continue to buy, sell, and use property, there will be a need for mapmakers in the world.  It's a job that fits Dode well.  Part time detective, part time outdoorsman, full time mapmaker!