Los Angeles County · Land Surveying
Walter Temple founded his town in 1923 so working families could afford homes, named its streets for his own, and watched it become the Home of the Camellias. Incorporated in 1960, Temple City is a flat, orderly San Gabriel Valley grid — which is not the same as a simple one.
Tract lot, hedge line, or Las Tunas storefront — describe the project and we will match the scope. Call (213) 787-3342 to talk it through.
The 1923 townsite began with 285 acres and a park facing Las Tunas Drive; the camellia identity arrived by contest in 1944, and the festival still parades down the same street. Around that core, Temple City filled out in orderly waves — prewar bungalow blocks, postwar tracts — until incorporation in 1960 formalized a city of nearly 32,000.
The flat grid invites a common mistake: assuming simplicity. Camellia hedges and mature landscaping hide corners; additions have accumulated on the modest lots for a century; the ADU wave presses setbacks that were never generous; and Las Tunas Drive's storefronts carry commercial questions. Orderly records, yes — but the measured facts still decide everything.
Retracement spans the townsite's 1920s plats and the postwar tracts around them — records of good quality whose field evidence has thinned in the usual ways. The garden-city landscaping adds its own twist: corners and lines vanish beneath decades of hedges and planting, so recovery leans on careful search and block-wide evidence. Restored corners are documented with the county.
The docket is steady residential precision: setbacks for conversions and additions, lines staked before fences and walls, unrecorded improvements documented for sales and permits, and the occasional Las Tunas commercial transaction. The city reviews carefully and the community keeps its standards high — measured facts fit right in.
Five services answer most Temple City questions — lines and corners first, documentation where permits need it:
The projects that bring Temple City owners in usually involve:
Any of these focus the research and firm the number:
We pull the townsite or tract record, confirm scope, then field-measure with respect for the landscaping. Steps on our how it works page.
The recorded plats carry the names as dedicated — Workman, Kauffman, and the rest — and later renames live in the county's street records. Retracement uses the maps regardless of what the signs say today; the geometry, not the nomenclature, defines your lot.
Almost always — we search by measurement first, computing where the corner should sit and probing precisely there, and where a monument is truly buried in roots we set offset references instead of excavating. The hedges stay; the corners get recovered or re-established around them.
Because flat is not the same as known. A century of fences, hedges, and additions has quietly redistributed inches on every block, and permits, sales, and ADU applications all turn on measured margins the eye cannot supply. The grid makes surveys efficient — not optional.
Permits and recording are different systems — additions are permitted with the city, not recorded with the county, so nothing being 'recorded' is normal. What matters is whether it was permitted and where it stands. An as-built survey documents the physical facts; the city's records answer the permit half.
A survey matched to the financing — typically ALTA/NSPS for a lender, showing boundary, building, parking, and the title exceptions plotted. Small-corridor buildings often share walls or rear access informally; the survey converts those informalities into documented facts before they become surprises.
We serve property throughout Temple City 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 Southern California Land Surveyors at (213) 787-3342 with the address and project, and we will find the lines the landscaping has been keeping.