Kroll Map Company has provided utility mapping and easement mapping services throughout the Puget Sound region for decades. Our work supports municipalities, water districts, electric utilities, and engineering firms that require accurate, reliable spatial data for infrastructure management and planning. Recent projects include easement mapping for Woodinville Water District and Lakewood Water District, as well as the conversion and documentation of more than 10,000 easements for Seattle City Light. In that project, our team transcribed and interpreted century-old legal descriptions and transformed them into usable, modern GIS data.
Kroll specializes in forensic mapping services, focusing on the research and reconstruction of complex, incomplete, or historical land records and legal descriptions. We integrate information from a wide range of sources and verify geographic features within contemporary GIS environments. Our team converts utility line and easement legal descriptions into precise CAD and GIS-ready datasets. Whether the project requires basic feature mapping or fully attributed geospatial databases, we deliver consistent, high-quality results that integrate seamlessly into existing workflows. Kroll provides dependable, cost-effective mapping solutions that help organizations manage infrastructure assets with confidence and clarity.
The Forensic Mapping Process: Cross-Referencing History
Resolving an overlapping claim requires treating cartography like a crime scene investigation. Kroll Map Company’s forensic mapping services bridge this gap by meticulously cross-referencing text, engineering data, and physical history. We don’t just look at the disputed boundary line; we reconstruct the entire original layout of the surrounding area. The process involves a deep analytical dive into three core areas:
Deed and Legal Description Analysis: Breaking down the language of the conflicting documents to identify errors in mathematical closures or call directions from the original drafts.
Engineering Document Review: Examining historical right-of-way maps, early municipal infrastructure blueprints, donation land claim bounds, and old railroad engineering files to find stable, unchanging anchors in the landscape.
Historical Archive Integration: This is where the magic happens and the mystery is truly solved. Kroll houses a large proprietary in-house historical archive featuring rare plats, township ownership maps, survey maps, and mining claim maps that date back to the 1870s.
By pulling these ancient, physical map tracings- many inherited from our predecessors like the Anderson Map Company- our team can see exactly what the land looked like when the original legal descriptions were recorded. You can read more about how this happens in the Kroll blog post “Untangling the Past: How Kroll’s Forensic Mapping Solves Overlapping Property Claims”.
