Anne and I were walking the beach when we encountered a pair of surveyors who were surveying the Armstrong property down the beach. They were friendly and explained who they were and what they were doing. According to them, Mr. Armstrong is in poor health, and his wife is looking to sell their land. The surveyors said that there are about thirty acres, much of it back in the swamp, but also including a good stretch of the beach. Most importantly it includes the old lightkeeper’s house. This building looks worse for wear but might still be salvageable. The surveyors were hired by a downstate realtor, who I guess was engaged by the Armstrongs. I fear that they might be looking at subdividing the land, and creating lots of lots, and further fueling the building boom that that end of the beach has already seen. The surveyors even joke about building condos. These two men were ducking in and out of the woods as we approached them, recording data using a staff with its own antenna that communicated with a tripod mounted differential GPS base station that they had already erected in front of the lightkeeper’s house. Tempting as it may be to shoot the messengers, I do not blame these guys for simply doing their jobs. They seemed to know their business and spoke of two previous surveys. They referenced an 1865 survey that the US Government had commissioned for the light station and supplanted the original 1840 survey.