Boundary Line Maintenance

     Allatoona Lake is the oldest multipurpose project in the USACE’s South Atlantic Division.  The Allatoona Project is comprised of 25,893 acres of fee owned land encompassing Allatoona Lake and managed by the Allatoona Project Management Office in Cartersville, Ga.  Every winter, USACE Rangers, along with contractors and volunteers, maintain an average of 50 miles of fee owned USACE boundary line before the spring recreation season begins.  Maintenance of these boundary lines involves clearing the boundary line of brush, repainting “witness” trees (see below), locating boundary monuments, and identifying encroachments from adjacent properties.  Boundary monuments are made of concrete and contains a metal plate on top showing the exact property line.  Witness trees are painted to "witness" the boundary line and to help find the monuments, however most witness trees do not show the actual bounday line.  Boundary maintenance can be an exciting challenge as monuments have often become buried, or “temporarily hidden”, and witness trees have been downed, requiring the use of several navigation tools and detective skills.         

      Volunteers play a vital role in boundary line maintenance.  If you would like to volunteer for boundary line maintenance, simply contact our office and sign up to volunteer.  Please note that you should be in good physical condition to sign up as most of our boundary line involves moderate to steep terrain.

Ranger Flint digs up a buried monument and verifies its Identification. 


After clearing the line, Ranger Sketo searches for a "lost" monument with a metal detector. 


A machete, boundary line map, and a metal detector are common tools used in boundary line maintenance.