The first mention of Elliot Bird working as a surveyor was in 1917, from the Salt Lake Mining Review, volume 19. He was “appointed a surveyor in the government survey department under the direction of I.C. Thoresen. He will be assigned to field duty in southeastern Utah.

According to documents and the Salt Lake Mining Review, he continued to do surveys from 1918 to 1935. Locations included New Harmony, Fisk Lake, Carcass Creek, Fremont River, and Grover.

Bird surveyed Pleasant Creek in July to August of 1919 (although the very first official survey had been done in 1883). Many surveys have been done in Pleasant Creek.

When Bird wrote his name on November 1, 1921 on the rock, he was about to begin a survey on November 4 that was more focused around Hanksville (Beaver Wash and Granite Ranch). He finished that survey December 1, 1921. Perhaps Bird was friends with the current landowners in Pleasant Creek, or he found it such a pretty, restful place he wanted to spend time there before working around Hanksville.

In Bird's 1921 survey report, he detailed his tools of the trade, but might have been a bit mixed up on the exact type of Transit he used. He called his a “Young & Sons light Mountain Transit, Model 8531.” Perhaps Young & Sons didn’t make a Light Mountain Transit, but another company, Gurley did. Survey work couldn’t be done without a Transit, and William J. Young invented the Transit in 1833 for railroad surveys. Perviously, people had used the English theodolite which was more expensive, more accurate, and easy to break.

According to the Smithsonian Museum: The transit was ideally suited for use in the United States. It was efficient: since the telescope can be reversed end for end, surveyors could take sights forward and backward along the line. It was rugged: an early commentator noted that a transit "cannot be made totally useless by any accident short of absolute breakage of the parts." This ruggedness was especially important for surveyors who were often many weeks away from any shop that could repair their instruments. And it was economical: throughout the 19th century, a good transit cost no more than $150 and would last a lifetime and beyond.

Bird also used a Smith Solar Attachment, although he also wrote that he used Polaris (the North Star) to make sure everything was lined up. “At my camp … at 4:37 am … I observe Polaris at a western elongation with the telescope in direct and reverse positions, and mark the line thus determined with a tack in a stake firmly driven in the ground … at 8 am I lay off the azimuth of Polaris which is 1 degree 25 feet to the east, and mark the meridian thus determined with a tack in a stake firmly driven in the ground. … at 9 am , with the transit in the meridian, I set off 38 degrees 11 feet north on the latitude arc; 15 degrees 13 or 19 feet south on the declination arc; and determine a meridian with the solar which I find agrees with the true meridian.”

He does another solar test at noon and writes, “I made a meridian observation of the sun for time and latitude, observing simultaneously the altitude of the sun’s lower limb and the transit of the sun’s west limb, reversing the telescope and observing simultaneously, the altitude of the sun’s upper limb and the transit of the sun’s east limb. … which agrees with the computed declination of the sun.”