Boundary surveys, ALTA surveys, site plans and construction staking across Pickens County. Licensed Georgia surveyor serving Jasper, Nelson and Talking Rock.
Pickens County sits in the Blue Ridge mountains of north Georgia, with Jasper as its county seat. The county lies in the Blue Ridge province, and Mount Oglethorpe, at 3,288 feet, stands here as the southernmost peak of the Blue Ridge. The formation that matters most to a survey in Pickens County is marble: the Murphy Marble Belt, the Georgia Marble district, runs through Tate, Marble Hill and Nelson, and the Pickens County courthouse itself was built of Tate marble. That mountain relief is why topographic surveys and site plans carry weight here, and why a set of contours is often worth having before a design is finished rather than after.
S&S Land Surveying LLC works from 549 West Ave in Cedartown, in Polk County, and takes work throughout Pickens County. The firm was founded at the end of 2021 by William "Bart" Sims, who has more than 40 years of surveying experience, and the work is performed by a licensed Georgia surveyor. We hold a 4.9 star rating across 50+ Google reviews. Jasper is the county seat, with Nelson and Talking Rock the other incorporated municipalities, and we cover the unincorporated county as well.
Georgia is a metes and bounds state. The federal rectangular survey system never applied here, because land in Georgia was granted by the State rather than by the federal government, so there is no township and range grid underneath a Pickens County deed. Instead the State identified land by land district and land lot number, and those identifiers still appear in the legal descriptions on deeds and plats recorded today. Following them back is normally where the retracement of an older boundary starts.
Under O.C.G.A. § 44-2-1, deeds are recorded with the Clerk of Superior Court of the county where the land lies. The office holding the record is fixed by the location of the property itself, not by the owner's address, so a Pickens County parcel is recorded in Pickens County regardless of where the owner happens to live.
Plats are governed by O.C.G.A. § 15-6-67, the Georgia Plat Act. The clerk files and records plats meeting the standards of the State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, on a sheet no smaller than 8.5 by 11 inches and no larger than 24 by 36 inches. The Act further provides that a subdivision plat cannot be recorded without approval from the planning commission or the governing authority, so a division of land has to clear local review before the clerk can accept it. Current parcel and assessment data for the county is published through the Pickens County parcel and assessment portal.
Pickens County lies in the Blue Ridge province, the crystalline core of the southern Appalachians. Mount Oglethorpe, at 3,288 feet, is the southernmost peak of the Blue Ridge and marks the southern end of that range in Georgia. The rock here is crystalline rather than the layered limestone of the valleys to the west, so the defining formation for surveyors is the Murphy Marble Belt, the Georgia Marble district that runs through Tate, Marble Hill and Nelson. The Pickens County courthouse was built of Tate marble quarried in the county.
Mountain ground changes how a parcel reads. Slope, rock outcrop and the difference in elevation from one end of a tract to the other all affect where a structure can be sited, how access and a driveway are laid out, how stormwater is handled and what a lender or engineer wants documented before work begins.
A topographic survey records the surface and the contours of that terrain, and a boundary survey establishes where the lines run across it. On steep and wooded mountain parcels the fieldwork simply takes more care, and getting the elevation and the lines right up front keeps a design from being drawn against ground that will not hold it.
Retracing deed and plat calls to locate and mark the lines and corners of a parcel.
Learn More →Title and lender grade surveys prepared to the ALTA/NSPS standards for commercial transactions.
Learn More →Elevation and contour mapping for design work, drainage review and permitting.
Learn More →Existing conditions and proposed improvements drawn for city and county permit submittals.
Learn More →Dividing a tract into new parcels, prepared for the local approval a plat filing requires.
Learn More →Setting building corners, offsets and control so the work gets built where the plan puts it.
Learn More →Select a city for local surveying information. We also cover the unincorporated parts of the county, along with the county seat at Jasper and the town of Talking Rock. Nelson straddles the Pickens and Cherokee line, so which office records a deed or plat there depends on where the parcel actually lies.
Pickens County borders Bartow, Cherokee, Dawson, Gilmer and Gordon counties, all in Georgia. The neighbors we cover with their own pages are below.
Send us the parcel details and we will tell you what the job needs.
Request Free Quote