Los Angeles County · Land Surveying
Hidden Hills is a city behind gates: incorporated in 1961, laid out by A. E. Hanson in the 1950s as an equestrian community of large lots, private streets, no sidewalks, and miles of horse trails. Surveying here starts with access and ends with acreage-scale precision.
Tell us the lot and the project; we coordinate gate access and scope the fieldwork around your community's rules. Call (213) 787-3342 to talk it through.
Everything that makes Hidden Hills distinctive shows up in its survey work. The city's roughly 650 home sites sit on large parcels along private, gated streets; bridle trails thread between and behind properties; and the improvements — barns, arenas, guest houses, pools — spread across grounds that owners keep improving. There are no commercial areas; every survey is a residential estate survey.
Access is part of the job. Fieldwork inside a guard-gated community is coordinated in advance — with you, and where required with the community association — so crews arrive cleared and the work proceeds without friction. We plan that logistics layer into every Hidden Hills scope from the first call.
Requests from inside the gates usually involve:
Hanson's plan gives Hidden Hills unusually coherent records: the subdivision maps, the private street system, and the trail network were designed together, and the recorded geometry reflects it. Retracement is usually clean; the field challenges are scale and terrain — long lines across paddocks and slopes, corners in brush, and improvements that grew organically across decades of ownership.
Private streets change one thing owners often miss: the frontage boundary is defined by the recorded street easement or lot line rather than a public right-of-way, and fences, gates, and landscaping along it need to respect that geometry. Trail easements behind and beside lots work the same way — recorded rights that stay with the land. We plot both so projects start from the real lines.
Most Hidden Hills work combines several of these — lines, terrain, and the recorded rights that shape estate projects:
Through you, arranged in advance. We schedule fieldwork for cleared dates, provide crew and vehicle details for the gate, and follow whatever protocol your association uses. It adds a planning step, not an obstacle — access coordination is a standard part of every gated-community scope we run.
They change what defines it. Instead of a public right-of-way line, your frontage follows the recorded lot line or street easement from the subdivision — often not where the pavement edge suggests. Before building walls, gates, or landscaping along a private street, it is worth locating that recorded line precisely.
The land is usually yours or a neighbor's; the trail typically exists as a recorded easement over it, administered under community rules. We plot the recorded trail easement against your boundary so you can see exactly what strip it occupies and what you can and cannot build there. The governing documents answer who maintains it.
Locating the lines and any trail or utility easements first, then mapping the grades where the structures will sit. Barns and arenas are large, permanent, and hard to shift, so the survey step — lines, easements, topography, setbacks — happens before the pad design, not after. Your designer takes it from there with real numbers.
Roomy lots breed confident guesses, and the guesses fail at the edges. Long lines through brush and terrain drift out of mind, trail easements narrow the usable strip, and a structure placed by eye can land closer to the line than anyone intended. The survey costs a fraction of moving a barn.
Estate scopes come together from a few specifics:
We handle record research first, coordinate access with you and the community, then complete fieldwork in planned visits. See how it works for the general flow.
We serve property throughout Hidden Hills and across Los Angeles County — request a survey quote for any parcel in the area.
Survey scope and deliverables depend on title records, site conditions, and what your project requires. Call (213) 787-3342 to discuss the property and the survey you need.
Call (213) 787-3342 with the parcel and the project, and Southern California Land Surveyors will coordinate access and scope the fieldwork around your community's process.