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The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey land ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, following the end of the ...
The Public Land Survey System was not the first to define and implement a survey grid. A number of similar systems were established, often using terms like section and township but not necessarily in the same way. For example, the lands of the Holland Purchase in western New York were surveyed into a township grid before the PLSS was established.
Figure 1. This BLM map depicts the principal meridians and baselines used for surveying states (colored) in the PLSS.. The following are the principal and guide meridians and base lines of the United States, with the year established and a brief summary of what areas' land surveys are based on each.
In the United States Public Land Survey System, a baseline is specifically the principal east-west line (i.e., a parallel) upon which all rectangular surveys in a defined area are based. The baseline meets its corresponding principal meridian (north-south line) at the point of origin, or initial point, for the land survey.
In the United States Public Land Survey System, a principal meridian is the principal north–south line used for survey control in a large region, and which divides townships between east and west. The meridian meets its corresponding baseline at the point of origin, or initial point , for the land survey.
A survey township, sometimes called a Congressional township or just township, as used by the United States Public Land Survey System and by Canada's Dominion Land Survey is a nominally-square area of land that is nominally six survey miles (about 9.66 km) on a side.
These kinds of problems caused the United States to largely replace this system except in the east. Beginning with the Land Ordinance of 1785, it began a transition to the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) used in the central and western states. The eastern, or original states, continue to use the metes and bounds surveys of their founders.
The chain is the unit of linear measurement for the survey of the public lands as prescribed by law. All returns of measurement in the rectangular system are made in the true horizontal distance in links, chains, and miles. The only exceptions to this rule are special requirements for measurement in feet in mineral surveys and townsite surveys ...