From The Yerkes Standard, Spring 2006
For the past 132 years, Yerkes Associates and its predecessor
firms, have provided meaningful employment for thousands of people
and enhanced the quality of life in this region. From our early beginning
as a land survey and civil engineering firm, we have evolved into a
firm offering a breathtaking array of services including GIS mapping
and GPS surveys, which are used in our daily engineering and landscape
design work. Through all of this we remain a family owned business.
Yerkes Associates began in 1874, when Samuel Garrigues
left the Pennsylvania Railroad and founded a land survey and civil
engineering firm in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. His brother, John S. Garrigues,
also joined the firm, which was located next to the Bryn Mawr Post
Office. The firm came to be known as S. M. Garrigues and J. S. Garrigues,
Civil Engineers. Their work extended from Overbrook to western Chester
County. Milton Yerkes, C.E., (the grandfather of our current Chairman
John B. Yerkes, Jr., P.E.) joined the firm in 1895.
John Garrigues joined the newly formed Bryn Mawr Trust Company in
1890 and Samuel Garrigues died in 1900 and the firm became Milton R.
Yerkes, C.E.
Yerkes Associates’ plan files still contain many of the original
plans of farms, towns, and bridges of that era. John B. Yerkes, P.E.
(Senior) started work with his father in 1933, and in 1943 the firm
became M. R. and J. B. Yerkes, Civil Engineers. Milton Yerkes retired
from the firm in 1959, and died in 1963.
Our name was again changed in 1956 to Yerkes Engineering Company.
John B. Yerkes, Jr. started working for the firm in 1961, about the
same time our offices were moved from the center of Bryn Mawr to Charles
Drive, located at the edge of the Bryn Mawr Business District.
Yerkes established a branch office in West Chester in 1966 by purchasing
the firm of the Chester County Surveyor. In 1969 the firm name became
Yerkes Associates, Inc. to reflect the diversified services we offered.
In 1990 Russell Yerkes, the fourth generation of the Yerkes family
to be involved in our business, joined the firm and formed a municipal
inspection division. In 1995 we moved our main offices to West Chester,
Pennsylvania and relocated our Bryn Mawr office to the Rosemont Business
Campus in Rosemont. In 2000, we opened an additional office in the
Morgantown/Reading area to serve the Berks County region.
All of us at Yerkes Associates are extremely excited about the future
and have committed to continue to serve you as a family owned organization
providing personal contact.
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