The PLSS- dividing the country into a grid

Some of you might read this blog because you're our family and you enjoy keeping up on our lives.  Some of you might read this blog because you're "blog stalkers" and enjoy the window into the lives of strangers.  (And we can be pretty strange around here!)  I'm sure there are none of you read this blog because you want to learn more about land surveying!  Too bad, because that's what you're getting today!  I have a curious mind.  Dode and I have spent hours and hours discussing survey law and techniques.  I've enjoyed our conversations and have found some things to be quite interesting.  Maybe you'll feel the same way.


By Washington State law, the one thing dealing with land that only a licensed land surveyed can do is put in your property corners.  Real estate agents regularly write up legal descriptions (bad idea - never let them do your property).  Contractors do their own elevations when moving dirt.  But, only a land surveyor can tell you where your property corners are.


Every piece of property ever sold by the United States is tied to monuments put in by government land surveyors.  The organized way they surveyed out the land while preparing to sell it is called the Public Land Survey System (PLSS).  The PLSS began shortly after the Revolutionary War and is still continuing on in some areas of the country.  After the Revolutionary War, the government wanted to give land to soldiers as a thank you.  They also wanted to sell land to raise money.  But, before they could give or sell off the land, they needed to know what they had and they needed a way to identify each parcel of land that got sold.  The Public Land Survey System was born.  Teams of surveyors were sent off across the country to divide up the land into a grid system.


They divided the land up into six mile squares called townships.  The surveyors would put monumentation around the outside of the townships (we'll get to what a township is in a minute) at half mile intervals.  They didn't have the kinds of monuments you see today, iron rods or brass hubs.  While doing the surveying, the survey crews would be on months long expeditions and had to make do with whatever they could find at the location.  Items such rock cairns, tree carvings, ash piles, even dinosaur bones at each corner were used.  The things they used to mark the corners is called original evidence.  Nothing makes a land surveyor more excited than finding a piece of original evidence.   Dode says I should give up on geocaching and we should start searching out original evidence.  He thinks it'd be much more exciting to find than an ammo box filled with junk.  More exciting for who is my question?

Here's the email from Dode that accompanied the above photo of original monumentation Dode found last summer...

"Do you see the letters “BT” in the picture?  Those were carved in 1859.  They are about 4” tall and that piece is the only part of the old stump left."

Dode continues to be amazed at the places he's found survey monumentation.  You're out in the woods in the mountains thinking you're in a place man has never been to before, you look down at a rock and you see that a surveyor has left his mark here years ago.  They had quite an adventure; mountains, swamps, deserts, they surveyed it all!

The PLSS system covers most of the United States (the areas in color).

Can you guess why the original 13 colonies or the state of Texas aren't part of the PLSS?

The land in the 13 colonies had already been sold by England to individual property owners.  The land in Texas joined the Union later and already had their own methods.

Do you see the different colors in the United States above?  Each area in the same color (Washington and Oregon are yellow) is controlled by the same principal meridian and baseline.  The one controlling Washington and Oregon is located in Willamette, Oregon.  Every township in both states refer back to that dot on the map, or point of beginning.  The meridian refers to longitude and the baseline is a line of latitude.  Here in Arlington, our township is 31 North.  That means we are 186 miles north from the principal meridian in Oregon.  If you look closely at the map above, you can see where the point of beginning (interception of the two lines) is for each different colored area.

Township:  A square parcel of land made up of 36 sections (36 square miles)

Range:  a measure of distance east or west of the principal meridian in units of six miles

Here in Arlington, our range is 5 West, so we're 30 miles west of the baseline.

 Once the surveyors had surveyed around the outside of the township, they surveyed the inside of the township into one mile squares.  The surveyors monumented the corners of each of the one mile squares the same way they had monumented the outside of the township.  The one mile squares they call sections.  Each section in a township gets a unique number: 1 - 36.

The government would create a legal description for each parcel listing it's section number, township, and range.  With that information, the property owner could go out, find the monuments, and identify their property.  The surveyors would also create a report about the land in the section,  including information like: rivers/lakes/streams, unique features, timber, roads/trails, improvements.  As the government received the information back about each section, they were able to sell it.  The original deed would sell the land between the monuments at each section.  Remember that sentence, it's an unexpectedly important one!

The original surveyors weren't using modern technology, they used a survey chain, surveyor's compass, jacobs staff and transit .  For the most part, their measurements were surprisingly accurate but there were times where they were surprisingly inaccurate.  But inaccurate or not, where they set the section corner became the section corner.

"While the original PLSS surveys were supposed to conform to official procedures, some errors were made due either to honest mistakes or to fraudulent surveys. Existing surveys are considered authoritative, and any new surveys must work from existing corners and surveys, in spite of errors in the original surveys and variations from the ideal. This sometimes results in sections that are far from square, or that contain well over or under 640 acres." taken from NationalAtlas.gov.  


In other words, the government sold you what ever land was contained within the monuments that they set.  They tried to do one mile squares but they knew that it was impossible to get it exact.  So, the property boundary was controlled by the actual monument and not by the distances the surveyor reported.  Did the purchasers get full one mile squares?  Nope.  Their property was defined by the monuments even if they were not placed very well.  The government sold the land between the monuments.  Some times that was more area than advertised and sometimes less, but it's just about guaranteed to never be exact.


When surveyors today go out and set property corners, they are doing what is called a retracement survey.  They are re-tracing the steps of the original surveyors.  Sometimes they find a mistake but like it says in the paragraph above, or in the sentence I told you to remember, wherever the original surveyors set the monuments, they are in the correct place.  Property owners were always sold the land between the monuments.  If you want your property surveyed then the surveyor will do many hours of research and field work to identify where the government surveyor had put the monument over a hundred years ago.

Now that I've got you convinced that those original dinosaur bones, ash piles, and stumps are the official legal corners of a section, next time I'll confuse the issue by sharing how those corners can change over time.  Stay tuned, I just know you can't wait!