Understanding the Public Land Survey System

okay geographers i'm gonna get into the public land survey system or i'm gonna explain how this works the general idea behind it and then show you how to actually you know make make sense of this stuff figure out specific locations specific townships all right so let's let's get moving here to start with we have survey line that way and that way and so it's north is at the top and therefore east over here south and west going that way you dig all right so this line here we call the baseline all right and then this one going that way we call the principle and note we've used meridian before when talking about lines of longitude right it's it's similar but not the same just keep that in mind that we're not dealing with latitude and longitude now we're dealing with township and range we're dealing with the public land survey system yet you're going to see some of these names overlap terms overlap things like that in everything we do the the best you can do is just you know figure it out to learn it memorize it there's no real trick here all right so what happened all right years ago as we had surveyors go out and they would typically they'd find some high spot some you know mountain where they could look out and survey these lines for miles all right these initial starting lines and then off of these lines they made grid right in fact let me switch colors here so they just went in every direction and made six mile by six mile grids all right let me go this way just so we have everything in there okay so went as far as they possibly could so each of these squares here would be six miles by six miles or 36 square miles that's the the idea they in theory they're perfectly square and perfect that's what thomas jefferson was all about this rational mathematical logic in reality it actually looks more like my sloppy drawings because of mountain ranges and and even terrain or issues mean this was happening years and years ago so it wasn't exactly state-of-the-art survey equipment whole host of reasons so they're they're supposed to be perfect honestly in in some parts of california you run into plenty of things that look more like that this this sloppy stuff that's that's why drew it that way not because shake horribly like an old man all right okay so we've got these squares in here and we call each of these township all right so each square represents township here and we another key thing here with land division what we're dealing with is we're interested in the squares themselves when we're doing latitude and longitude we're interested in the intersections we're looking for points now we're interested in area so keep that in mind all right we're interested in the squares not where these lines intersect all right so let's start with don't know let's do this one right here i'll even color it in to show that we want it that we're that we're interested in should say the the area itself okay so this township has specific location or address what we're going to get here in fact let me just move this i'm going to change colors again try to make this visually meaningful so this right here we need to get value and an value all right for township and range all right so with township and range here what we're going to do first is we're going to look at the baseline and we're going to count squares either north or south of that baseline all right so we're south of the baseline and we're one two three four squares to the south so it's t4s for township for south alright so we got that one now we need our range value and we use the principal meridian so we locate that line and now we're simply counting squares east or west of that principal meridian so we're to the west one two three so it'd be three oops dummy or three for range three west all right so the exact location here we need both of these things right because honestly this whole row right there is four south right so if just said township four south it could be anything along here for miles and miles same thing with three west this whole row or column rather is all r3 here right but these two put together it can only be this specific township you dig does that make sense and so like don't know let's do this one right up there that would be in fact you know feel free pause this video think about it you know what is it but all you're gonna do is you're gonna find that baseline first of leave pause do you try this and you got it but you find that bass line and you go one two three so it would be three this time and then we're going to find the baseline and count i'm sorry the principal meridian and count over all right so one oops one two over there so it'd be two east all right so township three north range to east is this guy right there hopefully that makes sense work through this and as i've most likely shown you in class by the time you're you're watching this do have on canvas study guide kind of thing we've got much neater version of that and have these initial you know little townships they've got the letters in there you're trying to figure out okay what is it right what is what is what are those those letters there you're counting the the squares from the baseline and from the principal meridian that's how you solve it all right but that's just that's just little bit here there's more to it of course because 36 square miles that's gigantic that's huge amount of space here and and this you gotta think back this is all thomas jefferson so that's why it's all rational right but it's also here's the thing don't tell anybody we don't like to talk about this but but jefferson was he was kind of communist like even before we had communists and he was hypocritical communist he was monster mean there's whole you know slavery whole deal monster but his romantic vision of the united states was not just to spread from sea to shining sea and come up with this rational way to divide up this newly acquired land and you know all that kind of stuff he wanted nation of independent family farms that was his goal he figured if everyone had just enough land to to farm to raise what they needed to just live and they weren't bossed around by any kind of government we would have perfect society all right that's the that's the goal that's what he envisioned so to you know to give away or sell 36 square miles that's that's plantation style of farming that's massive that's not for some independent farm right for just some little you know family is living independently so we take every township in here and we further divide it into what we call sections so every single one of these townships is divided and let me draw one let me move this here for you we have got to count this this is going to be messy but in here don't bother counting it i'm going to draw bigger on the other side but within each of these townships we have 36 equal one square mile sections all right so let me flip this over right here and i'm just going to draw township okay so again six miles this way six miles that way and then within here let me see if can do this properly try to check my work do as say not as do if screw up the count tied to it by golly think did it and again the idea is it's all perfect and equal and you know these even one square mile sections within there so let's just say what we're looking at here screw that up okay so let's say it's this one let's just go ahead and use this one right here so our township and range value we still need to figure that out so from the baseline you can make sense of it with all this stuff we've got our baseline right here we go one two three let's do this over here t3 south our range from the principal meridian one two be to so that's the township we're working with right so it's still it's still here this is what we're talking about but to actually make it you know legible so we can work with it we're just blowing it up here we're changing the scale we're working at different scale so we can see it and of course you know in every other direction we still have townships we'd have t3 south range one east over here t3 south range three east that way and and so on right we're still in that grid but within here we've got these sections and they're labeled in specific way okay we always start with one in the upper right or in the northeast okay again north is at the top of our map here so in the north east one starts up there and we go start trying not to screw up my lines but we go this way and then seven drops down here and we start going this way and then 13 drops down and we go this way and we keep doing this so it snakes back and forth throughout here and don't know why we do this all right thomas jefferson knew he was the kind of he wouldn't have randomly done something i'm sure there's some reason because this is how the greeks would have done it something along those lines but haven't taken the time to actually look this up but you know there's reason because there was reason for everything he did all right so 36 down there now here's the deal you want to commit this to memory this little numbering scheme and you want to do that because typically when we're working with this stuff we don't have it labeled neatly like this right either we're working at scale on map where we're pulled out enough where to you know label all of these things it would be confusing you couldn't read it all right we're working with maps that look more like this when you can see multiple townships all right or we're often working with maps where we're zoomed in so you only see few sections right and typically what we see the way it always works is our map covers say this township but also this township maybe the one down here and the one over here right so the map is like taking this area down here and you want to be able to work with this because you would have as this continues you know this way and we've got this one here and we've got the sections continuing this would be 36 right that section there this would be 25 that would be 24 we'd have this weird numbering thing because it would go 36 31 32 33. all right and so you want to know because you are skilled geographers you're going to look at that and you know yeah yeah get what's going on because know that tom jefferson numbered these sections you follow and then there's also you know on any test give you of this stuff i'm never going to label the numbers here so you have to commit that to memory and that worksheet give you on canvas does the same thing there are no sections labeled so the first thing would do is just go in there start with one in that northeast or that upper right and just go through label them all so it's it's easier for you okay and then from here each of these sections gets its own address right its own specific location here in the system so all of these are township three south range two east let's say this one specifically right here all right would be section we just do sec typically comma township 3 south range 2 east all right if we can do another one all right let's get rid of that let's see this guy right there all right section eight township three south range to east down here section 35 township three south range two so it's pretty pretty simple once you've figured all this you know township and range stuff out but do ask you questions about specific sections all right all of these sections will have this same part of the answer it's just the section number is going to change and that's why it's also important to memorize how this goes because if you start one over here or if you forget you do one through six here but you start seven here and go to twelve there and so on when ask you certain questions about you know these interior sections here you're going to get it wrong i'm asking about section 21 but it winds up being 22 for you because you numbered it incorrectly right so the real trick for you at least at this point as you're working with it is to remember how to properly label these sections you follow okay and of course we don't even leave it here because that's still one square mile that's like 640 acres that's massive so what we then do we don't have more sections we do what's called aliquot subdivision where we divide these sections into quarters right four equal squares in there and we describe that based on cardinal direction so like this guy up here would be the north east quarter of section 21 of township three south of range two east but even that's kind of big so what we'll also do is we'll further divide that right and so we make quarters of the quarter so like let's say this guy would be the southwest quarter right right there of the northeast quarter of section 21 of township three south of range two east and we go further we can do more and we can even do more and it can continue going on that's fantastic when you start to get into things where it's the quarter of the quarter of the quarter of the quarter of this section and so on it's absurd but it's also brilliant and rational and it works now good news physical geographers i'm not going to make you learn that much okay and force other people in other classes to do that stuff but all we're going to worry about for now is this general township and range stuff it's looking even worse here but being able to be you know comfortable in figuring out stuff so if ask you about this one or this one or wherever you can figure it out right but then also want you to be comfortable if expand one of these and show you the sections you need to be able to number these things properly remember you know how this whole convention works figure out the section itself but also make sure you can get that township three south range to east which again we just got by counting squares from the baseline and from the principal meridian and that's all you gotta do simple right everything's simple just make sure you go over this practice this use the resources give you and when it comes test day you're gonna be fine you dig all right happy mapping