ROYAL CITY - Thanks to the volunteer work of Jeff Curtis, a necessary survey of the 100-year-old Pioneer Cemetery on Road B Southeast has been completed.

Curtis operates his business - J. Curtis and Associates - from Mattawa. Upon being advised of the cemetery board's need to ascertain the precise boundaries of Pioneer, Curtis immediately offered to undertake a survey and mapping of the property.

The survey was done on June 12. Commissioner John Murphy assisted Curtis with a metal detector to locate buried corner markers and remnants of a perimeter wire fence, which was deeply buried after years of drifting sand. Measurements were then taken to further establish the cemetery boundaries.

"The Board was pleased with this achievement and would have been satisfied at that point," Murphy said. "However, Jeff was intrigued by the project and wished to effect a thorough determination of the boundaries."

Murphy returned on July 26 with assistant Ray Burdine. The two men spent several hours locating the long buried fence, digging down to expose it at several points along each of the four sides of the cemetery.

The fence, though obviously quite old, remained perfectly straight, leading to the conclusion that it had been buried by years of drifting sand, rather than having been covered by some earth-moving machine.

Curtis used a GPS instrument to set the coordinates of the boundaries and corner markers. Then he placed stakes around the perimeter of the cemetery.

An engineer's map drawn from the measurements will be provided to Cemetery District No. 5. This will be an invaluable tool for accurately locating existing and future graves.

"The Board is extremely grateful for the service Curtis and Associates has provided," Murphy said. "The professional fees for the amount of time and effort that went into this process would have been substantial, yet Jeff would accept no payment.

"The dedication and enthusiasm Jeff and Ray put into this effort was inspiring. Our community is fortunate to have skilled professionals who are willing to donate their time and effort for the public's benefit."

The survey project started with recently-retired board member Carol Miller. She advised the current commissioners that on the rare occasions when a new grave was required at Pleasant Valley, local surveyor Clinton Anderson would undertake to locate the position of the plot through the use of survey instruments.

Anderson asserted to Miller that he had surveyed and marked the corners twice in the past only to find that his stakes had been subsequently removed by unknown persons. He was therefore reluctant to comply with Miller's request that he establish new markers so the commissioners could determine plot locations without the need to call upon him.

The commissioners were concerned that since Anderson was difficult to contact, they could potentially be in an uncomfortable situation if a grave were required, especially on short notice. When John Murphy recently met Curtis in the process of enlisting his services for some land surveying, he asked Curtis if he would also survey the cemetery.

Curtis not only agreed, but offered to do so without charge, as a service to the community. The commissioners will now be able to locate and position grave plots by taking measurements from the perimeter boundary lines with a tape, just as they do at Royal Memorial Gardens in Royal City.