WHO WE ARE
Lake Country Land Professionals has a history in Rice County that dates back to 1924, when Walter G. Dokken of Faribault started one of the area's first surveying firms.
As one of the first Rice County surveyors, Walt Dokken worked for 34 years establishing some of the first official boundaries in the county. His predecessor, R.H.L. Jewett, had begun surveying in the late 19th Century and set some of the county's first property monuments, often nothing more than wooden stakes that disappeared within a generation.
Walt Dokken taught Tom Taylor everything he knew, and Tom got his surveyor's license under Walt's tutelage. In 1958, Tom purchased Walt's business, which he ran as The Thomas Taylor Company for 31 years. Tom also became county surveyor. As custodian of the land records Jewett and Dokken left behind, he spent countless hours deciphering cryptic notations in their well-worn notebooks and setting permanent monuments around Rice County.
County surveyor Tom Taylor, right, with assistant Dewey VanOrsow, in a 1977 Northfield News photo.
When Tom entered semi-retirement in 1989, the responsibility of running the business was transferred to his daughter, Sue Taylor Allen. Her husband, Charles R. "Chuck" Allen, had joined the Taylor firm in 1976, and became licensed as a surveyor while working for Tom.
WE ARE THE LAKE
COUNTRY LAND PROFESSIONALS:
Standing, from left: Matt Thibodeau, field technician; Gene
Buhr, survey/CAD technician; Carolynn Allen-Evans, chief
financial manager. Seated: Charles “Chuck” Allen,
president, and Sue Taylor Allen, researcher and accounting
clerk.
Lake Country Land Professionals became
the next generation of this well-respected company in 2006,
when Sue decided to sell the business to her husband, her
sister-in-law Carolynn Allen-Evans, and two other members
of the Taylor Company family: veteran surveyors David
Luecke and Keith Nelson, both of whom began working for Tom
Taylor at a young age.
And so we continue to operate as a family concern with deep
roots in the Faribault community, and continue the
tradition of serving Rice County as county surveyor.
As the direct business descendents of W.G. Dokken, we have
inherited a rich historical treasure of field notes and
records that give LCLP a distinct advantage when it comes
to figuring out where one person's property stops and
another starts in southcentral Minnesota.