PLSS (Public Land Survey System), PLSS Definition

The Public Land Survey System is the federal framework for describing the location of land across 30 of the 50 United States. It was established by the Land Ordinance of 1785, enacted under the Articles of Confederation before the Constitution was ratified. The system was created to solve a practical problem: how to systematically survey and sell the vast territory northwest of the Ohio River to pay Revolutionary War debts and fund the new government.

The PLSS divides land into a hierarchy of progressively smaller units. Principal meridians and baselines establish the coordinate origin for each survey area. From these lines, the land is divided into townships (6-mile squares), each township into 36 sections (1-mile squares, nominally 640 acres), and each section into halves and quarters down to the 40-acre quarter-quarter section. This hierarchy allows any point on covered land to be described with a concise, standardized text string.

Today, the PLSS covers all or part of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming — 30 states in total. The original thirteen colonies, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Texas, and Hawaii are not covered; those states use metes-and-bounds descriptions instead.

The Bureau of Land Management administers the PLSS today, maintaining the cadastral survey records, survey plats, and field notes that document the original surveys. These records form the legal foundation for land titles across the western half of the country and are used daily by surveyors, title companies, county assessors, oil and gas landmen, farmers, and anyone else who needs to identify a specific parcel of land.