What's a surveyor to do when his state has no musuem dedicated to surveying? Well, LeRoy Kautz, chairman of the North Dakota Society of Professional Land Surveyors, decided to create one. Now, after much time and effort by surveyors across the state, the museum opens its doors Memorial Day weekend.

Follow the expoits of land surveyor John Peter Walker as he works with Andrew Ellicott to mark the new Spanish-American boundary line east of the Mississippi River following the 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo and then goes on to become one of the first to map the American Southwest.

A  U.S. Border Patrol truck sits idle in the distance, while a line of surveyor’s stakes stretch beside the dirt road, which runs along thick clumps of river cane hiding the Rio Grande. Each stake is tagged with a plastic orange ribbon. “Proposed Fence” is written along their sides ...