Got a legal description like 6 26S 12W SW SW representing oil and gas lease polygons?  If so, you will want to try out our new legal2map service (the trial period is free) at http://www.legal2map.com  This web service will turn your legal description into a polygon that you can put on your map or just instantly see the results in Google map.  Try it for free and start getting that “yellow” on your map.

I often get the question, “Isn’t land grid a static database?”  Well actually, no.  This Wyoming State BLM page is devoted to changes and resurveys in Wyoming.  You can see all the townships that have been resurveyed in just the past ten years.  There are a lot of reasons for such resurveys often relating to problems dating back to the 1870s.  The lands have become increasingly valuable as oil and gas wells are drilled and therefore must be accurately resurveyed when questions arise.  This site also is a great resource for demonstrating the complexity of those “little squares” that are townships and ranges…. http://www.wy.blm.gov/cadastral/products.php  Check out the “Approved Survey Plats” for individual years, such as 2007.

The Public Land Survey System or PLSS is familiar to most who have ever done a real estate deal,  leased an oil and gas lease, or taken a plane flight over the central US.  We’re talking about those roughly one square mile sections you see from 30,000 feet.  Have you ever wondered how they were actually surveyed?   Most of these surveys are 150 to 225 years old and were measured using 17th century technology.  Edmund Gunter developed a surveying tool - a chain consisting of individual links - that provided accurate measurements when held taught.  This chain was 66 feet long, so a quarter quarter section would be ideally 10 chains on a side.  Township plat maps to this day still contain measurements in terms of chains, where a “perfect section” would measure 80 chains on a side.  The chain has an oddly metric aspect to it - each chain is divided up into 100 links, so one link is actually 7.92 inches long.  Gunter’s Chain was a surprisingly accurate standard and was used right up until 1970 when better methods came along.