Where in the World Is It?

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Establishing Real Property Boundaries

In a land where real property is valuable, and rights to real property are vigorously asserted, the exact location of boundaries is important – very important. European persons came to North America after legal rules concerning real property ownership were well developed in Europe. As one might expect, the settlers applied the rules they knew to the new land they decided to occupy. Boundaries of lands east of the Appalachian Mountains (in the pre-revolution colonies) were fixed much as they had been in England, by reference to natural features, apparent boundaries, etc. That mode of legal description is called "metes and bounds." Such a description might be:

Starting at the large square rock on the edge of Burbling Creek, which is 600 feet north by east of the county bridge, thence northeast by east 800 feet to an old oak tree, thence south 300 feet to the boundary of land granted to Chester Markupp by the County Court in 1756, thence westerly along said boundary to the edge of Burbling Creek, thence along said Creek in a northerly direction to the point of beginning.

That sort of description relies on many things, such as the creek not changing course, or someone not deciding the large stone would be a good addition to his rock fence, or not losing the County Court records from 250 years ago. Modern usage has replaced the things like rocks, trees, etc., with more objective and permanent things (such as steel posts set four feet into a concrete block, identified by a surveyor's seal and diagram). But the original description remains, since that is what created the plot in the first instance.

Further west in the United States, a different regime applies. Many states, and the "central government" promised Revolutionary War soldiers acres of land in the "Northwest Territories" in lieu of cash wages. That presented some political and diplomatic problems since the Indians then living in the area were not asked what they thought about the deal. However, it also created an opportunity to establish land boundaries in a more scientific manner.

Political compromises resulted in the ceding of all western lands to the federal government, with the understanding that new states would be created as settlement grew. The government needed some way to identify and demark the lands that it transferred ("patented") to private persons. The method employed was to survey the federal lands, marking out relatively square areas that could be identified without reference to things like rocks, trees, and old bridges. The surveys identified portions of land with reference to latitude and longitude, based on sun sightings and other such mathematical wizardry.

Initially, a particular set of instructions were given to individual surveyors concerning a specified, relatively small, part of the country. What is now the State of Ohio was the initial testing ground, so it has a number of survey areas. It was not too long before standard instructions were developed. As a result, most legal titles in an entire state refer back to a single starting point. Some states share a single starting point. The standardized instructions changed very little after the 1790s, so the boundaries of almost all of the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains were established in a single manner.

A surveyed "township" should not be confused with the governmental unit/area of the same name. A survey township has a particular description and is only intended to identify land parcels. A political township is a division of governing powers and the included area may or may not (usually not) have any relationship to the surveyed townships.The standard survey method was to identify a single starting point, with reference to exact latitude and longitude. From that point, lines were established running north and south (meridians) and others established running east and west (base line). Lines parallel with the meridians and base lines were established at six-mile intervals, with necessary adjustments to account for the shape of the Earth. When extended, those lines produced areas six miles square, or thirty-six square miles. Each of those areas are called a "township". Each township was further divided into one-mile-square (and one square mile) areas, known as "sections", containing 640 acres. Each section was numbered (1 through 36). Each section could be further subdivided, though the original surveyors only marked the center of each section line (halfway between the major corners) and sometimes the center-of-section point.

See the attached diagrams from the current official survey instructions.

The original surveyors were instructed to place markers at the site of the corners and points they established. The lines and locations identified and marked by the surveyors became the basis on which the government transferred land to individuals. The surveyors' markers establish the land's location, even if the surveyor erroneously fixed those points. It was not unusual for the surveyors to be less than perfectly accurate. This is understandable when one realizes that the surveyors were often far ahead of advancing civilization, much less geosynchronous satellites. They measured all the way across the continent with a not-so-precise optical instrument and a steel chain. Since they were normally paid based on the number of miles surveyed, quantity sometimes gave way to quantity. Surveying flat lands, like Indiana, was not a great challenge, but the mountainous west presented an entirely different problem. The surveys are based on theoretical horizontal measurements, i.e. a section is one mile on a side horizontally, not as the land lies. In rugged mountains, a walk from one section corner to another can be much longer than one mile – even assuming one need not detour for rivers, lakes, cliffs, Grand Canyons, and the like.

Current legal descriptions rely on these points established by the original surveyors. They are stated in terms of portions of sections. The sections are divided into quarters, which are divided into quarters, which are divided into quarters, etc. Thus, a legal description of a 5-acre parcel in Indiana might be:

The W1/2 of the NE1/4 of the SW1/4 of the SE1/4 of section 32, Township 7 North, Range 5 West, XXXXX County, Indiana.

OR, more commonly

W1/2, NE1/4, SW1/4, SE1/4, sec 32, TWP 7 N, R 5 W, XXXXX County, Indiana

Land parcels in cities or other "developed" areas have normally been subdivided to the point that such a description would be both very long and rather difficult to follow. Therefore, those areas have been subdivided in accordance with a "plat," which is merely a more-detailed map identifying the individual lots within the platted area. Parcels in platted areas are described with reference to the plat, such as:

Lot 32, Block 6, Hill's Addition to City of Old Haven, as recorded at Book 55 of Plats, page 46, records of XXXXX County, Indiana

The plats themselves are, however, located by reference to the original surveys.