Surveyors Mark America 250 at Mount Rushmore

The South Dakota society hosts NSPS’s America 250th Celebration October 18 to 20 in Deadwood. Monday is the day of commemoration: buses to Mount Rushmore, the dedication of an NSPS commemorative marker, and presentations on the memorial’s survey history alongside an NGS session on NSRS modernization. South Dakota’s governor and congressional delegation are among the invited guests.

The afternoon splits two ways. Crazy Horse Memorial, capped at 200, covers the carving and the surveying and monitoring behind it, including a Mountain Shop presentation by the mountain crew. The Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, capped at 55, covers the site’s surveying background and takes attendees down to the first level below the surface and the hoistroom.

Why it matters: Registration is $200 and closes October 14, Monday is capped at 250 people, and both afternoon options cap lower still.

NSPS →

NCEES Starts Work on a Non-Boundary PS Exam

NCEES is recruiting licensed subject-matter experts to help write a new Principles and Practice of Surveying Geospatial exam, covering mapping science, photogrammetry, remote sensing and related ground. It would test minimum competency on non-boundary content for any member board that chooses to issue such a license. Volunteers meet in Greenville, South Carolina, with travel funded.

Why it matters: A board that adopts this would license geospatial practice without ever testing boundary law, which either widens the profession or carves out its middle, depending on who you ask.

NCEES →

Backsight: The 2026 ALTA/NSPS Standards, Seven Months In

Not this week’s news — something already in force that may not have reached your plats yet. The 2026 Minimum Standard Detail Requirements were adopted in October 2025 after more than three years of work by the joint ALTA/NSPS work group, and they govern every survey commenced on or after February 23, 2026.

The change most likely to show up on your drawings is a new Table A Item 20. When a client selects it, potential encroachments and related conditions have to be summarized in a table on the face of the plat, with a means for a reviewer to locate each one — and explicitly without any statement of legal opinion or opinion as to ownership. Five categories: encroachments across boundary lines in either direction, encroachments into documented rights of way and easements, setback encroachments where the setbacks were supplied under Table A 6(a) or 6(b) or appear in recorded documents, physical access between adjoining parcels with no documented easement, and use of adjoining parcels by apparent occupants with no documented easement. The standard also says the table need not be a comprehensive list of every concern shown on the plat.

Other revisions touch relative positional precision (3.E.i), physical access evidence (5.B.iii), utility pole distances (5.C.ii), and a new notation requirement for parol statements (6.D.ii.(l)).

American Land Title Association →

On the Calendar

• October 1, 2026 — FIG Working Week 2027 deadline for peer-reviewed abstracts and full papers. Non-peer-reviewed abstracts are due November 1.
• February 23–25, 2027 — Geo Week, Salt Palace, Salt Lake City. First time in Salt Lake City.
• March 15–19, 2027 — NSPS Day on the Hill and the NSPS/YSN student competition, Doubletree by Hilton Washington-Crystal.
• May 23–27, 2027 — FIG Working Week, Stavanger, Norway. Theme: “The Power of Where for the New Generations.”