Property Survey

A History of Land Surveying on Cape Cod

Truro resident, Wilfred “Red” Slade began his land surveying career while still a teller at Seamen’s Savings Bank in Provincetown in the mid 1930s. Between 1948 and 1962 he worked as chief of survey party for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts State Highway. Included in his assignments was the laying out of the base line for the new Route 6. In 1962 he went into private practice, opening a modest surveying firm in Wellfleet.

Between 1965 and 1969 he was joined in the summers by twin brothers, Dick and Chet Lay who had strong family ties to Wellfleet that went back many generations. Upon graduation from college in 1970, they both had decided that property surveying was a pleasant way to make a living and so settled in Wellfleet with their new wives. With their love of the outdoors and for the Cape’s natural beauty, it was a decision that time has only reinforced.

Upon retirement in 2017 Dick and Chet Lay turned over their vast archives of historic survey records and digital files to Donald T. Poole of Outermost Land Survey, Inc. The purchase of the business by Outermost Land Survey, Inc. was a suitable fit as Chet and Dick have a compatible approach and philosophy to surveying as Donald.

Slade Associates has evolved into a modern surveying firm with a fully networked computer system, Computer-Aided Drafting and Design (CADD)-which allows plans to be sent to clients electronically-and with total station theodolites with electronic distance measuring units and GPS Enabled, Real Time Kinematic (RTK) and Control Survey quality GPS units. Slade Associates covers all aspects of property surveying, including boundary surveys, surveys for the Land Court, condominium conversion plans, certified plot plans, subdivision plans, control surveys for photogrammetry, topographic surveys, leveling, land planning, flood plain certificates and archival research at the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds and Probate.

The current assessors’ atlas for the Town of Wellfleet was prepared and is maintained by Slade Associates.

Please call, write or e-mail us with your project and we will submit to you a written quotation of costs. We are located at the corner of Route 6 and Pine Point Road in Wellfleet and Route 6A in Brewster.