Arkansas PLSS Converter — Section Township Range to GPS

Arkansas is surveyed under the Fifth Principal Meridian, which it shares with Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, and North Dakota. The Fifth Principal Meridian's initial point was established in 1815 at the confluence of the St. Francis and Arkansas Rivers in what is now Monroe County, Arkansas — making Arkansas not just a user of this meridian but its geographic origin. All of Arkansas's 75 counties are governed by this single meridian, and the baseline for the entire Fifth Principal system runs east-west through the state's geographic heart.

Arkansas's terrain ranges from the flat Mississippi Alluvial Plain in the east — known locally as the Delta — to the Ozark and Ouachita mountain systems in the north and west. These two landscapes produced very different survey experiences. The Delta's flat, seasonally flooded bottomland was difficult to survey because of standing water and dense bottomland hardwood forest, but the terrain itself was simple — no elevation change to complicate chaining. The Ozark and Ouachita highlands, with their rugged ridges, narrow valleys, and dense oak-hickory cover, produced some of the most irregular surveys in the southern PLSS region, with a higher proportion of protracted sections and government lots along the mountain rivers than in the agricultural counties of the east.

Arkansas's economy is built on agriculture, timber, and natural resources, and PLSS descriptions are the foundation of land transactions across all three sectors. The Delta counties produce some of the nation's leading rice, soybean, and cotton crops on precisely surveyed alluvial farmland. The Ouachita and Ozark national forests, together covering more than three million acres, are managed through PLSS-described timber sales and recreation permits. The state's natural gas production in the Fayetteville Shale and the Arkoma Basin generates active lease and royalty work in the western counties.