How to Read a Legal Land Description

A legal land description is the official language used in deeds, titles, and tax records to identify a piece of land without ambiguity. In 30+ US states, that language is the Public Land Survey System — a grid of townships, ranges, and sections that covers the country from Ohio westward.

Once you understand the structure, a description like NWSE 15 4N 7W Indian Meridian stops looking like a code and starts reading as a clear address for 40 acres of land.

The Two Major Systems

Before going further, it helps to know that the US uses two different systems for legal descriptions:

Public Land Survey System (PLSS) covers most of the continental US west of Ohio, plus parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. It uses a township-range-section grid anchored to named principal meridians. If your deed references sections, townships, ranges, and a meridian, you are in PLSS territory.

Metes and bounds is used in the original 13 colonies plus Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maine, Vermont, and Hawaii. Descriptions in this system read like a traversal — "beginning at an iron pin, thence North 45° East 200 feet..." — and require a surveyor's starting point rather than a grid reference.

This guide focuses on PLSS descriptions. If your deed contains compass bearings and distances without section numbers, you are dealing with metes and bounds.

Anatomy of a PLSS Description

A complete PLSS description has up to five components, always written from most specific to most general:

NWSE     |   15   |  4N   |  7W   |  Indian Meridian
(quarter)   (sec)  (town)  (range)   (meridian)

Quarter Section

The quarter section tells you which 160-acre chunk of a section you are in — or, with a double quarter, which 40-acre chunk:

• Single quarter (NW): The Northwest quarter of the section. 160 acres.
• Double quarter (NWSE): The Northwest quarter of the Southeast quarter. 40 acres.
• Triple quarter (NWNWSE): The Northwest quarter of the Northwest quarter of the Southeast quarter. 10 acres.

The reading order is right to left — start with the rightmost quarter (the parent) and work toward the left (the subdivision). So NWSE means: find the SE first, then find the NW within it.

Quarter designations are NE (northeast), NW (northwest), SE (southeast), SW (southwest).

Section Number

Sections are numbered 1 through 36 within each township. They follow a boustrophedon pattern — a back-and-forth path starting in the northeast corner:

 6  5  4  3  2  1
 7  8  9 10 11 12
18 17 16 15 14 13
19 20 21 22 23 24
30 29 28 27 26 25
31 32 33 34 35 36

Section 1 is always in the northeast corner. Section 6 is in the northwest. Section 36 is in the southeast. Knowing this pattern helps you sanity-check a description — if someone tells you Section 36 is in the north part of a township, something is wrong.

Each section is nominally 640 acres (one square mile), though sections along the western and northern edges of a township are often irregular due to survey correction lines.

Township

Township designates the north-south position from the baseline — the east-west reference line for each principal meridian. The format is a number followed by N or S:

• T4N = Township 4 North = 4 townships north of the baseline
• T3S = Township 3 South = 3 townships south of the baseline

Each township is 6 miles wide and 6 miles tall, containing 36 sections.

Range

Range designates the east-west position from the principal meridian. The format is a number followed by E or W:

• R7W = Range 7 West = 7 ranges west of the meridian
• R68W = Range 68 West = 68 ranges west of the meridian

Colorado's eastern plains extend far from the 6th Principal Meridian, which is why you see high range numbers like R68W there.

Principal Meridian

The principal meridian is the named north-south reference line from which ranges are measured in a given region. There are 37 in the US:

Each meridian has its own baseline and covers a specific geographic area. Using the wrong meridian in a conversion puts your result in the wrong state. When a description just says "PM" without naming it, you need to know the state and county to determine which meridian applies.

Reading Order: Smallest to Largest

The standard reading order for a PLSS description is smallest unit to largest — quarter, section, township, range, meridian. This is the opposite of how a postal address works (where you go from specific to general but read left to right in that order).

Here is a complete reading:

NWSE 15 4N 7W Indian Meridian

1. Indian Meridian — We are working in the Indian Meridian system, which covers most of Oklahoma.
2. 7W — 7 ranges west of the Indian Meridian.
3. 4N — 4 townships north of the baseline.
4. 15 — Section 15 within that township. Looking at the section grid, Section 15 is in the center-left of the township.
5. SE — The Southeast quarter of Section 15. 160 acres in the southeast corner of that section.
6. NW — The Northwest quarter of that SE quarter. 40 acres in the northwest corner of the SE quarter.

The resulting parcel is 40 acres near the center of Section 15 in that township.

Real Examples with Context

Deed Description — Agricultural Land

"The Southeast Quarter of the Northeast Quarter of Section 22, Township 3 South, Range 68 West, 6th Principal Meridian, Jefferson County, Colorado."

Parsing this:

• 6th PM, Colorado
• R68W: far west of the 6th PM, placing us in the Front Range foothills
• T3S: just south of the baseline
• S22: mid-township, left-center
• NE: northeast corner of the section
• SE of NE: southeast 40 acres of the northeast quarter

Result: 40 acres in Jefferson County, Colorado.

Tax Record Description — Smaller Parcel

"N2 NW S6 T2S R1E Willamette Meridian, Clackamas County, Oregon"

The N2 notation means the north half. So this is the north half of the Northwest quarter of Section 6 — approximately 80 acres. Section 6 is in the northwest corner of the township, meaning this parcel is in the far northwest of the township grid, just south of the Willamette baseline.

Oil and Gas Lease Description

"All of Section 15 and the NE of Section 22, T4N R7W Indian Meridian, Blaine County, Oklahoma"

This covers a full section (640 acres) plus a quarter section (160 acres) for a total of 800 acres. Multi-parcel descriptions like this are common in oil and gas leases where a company needs to cover a drilling unit that spans multiple legal descriptions.

Common Variations and Abbreviations

Legal descriptions are not perfectly standardized across counties and time periods. You will encounter:

Government lots appear along the northern and western edges of townships where the standard quarter-section grid doesn't fit perfectly. Their boundaries are irregular, and their acreage is defined in the original survey notes rather than calculated from fractions.

PLSS vs. Metes and Bounds

The fundamental difference is how location is defined:

PLSS defines location by reference to a pre-existing grid. Your parcel exists within a section, which exists within a township, which exists within a surveyed meridian system. The coordinates can be calculated mathematically from the description alone.

Metes and bounds defines location by traversal from a starting point — a monument, a tree, a pin in the ground. The description traces the boundary of the parcel by direction and distance. To use a metes and bounds description, you need the starting monument and a surveyor's measurement.

In practice:

• A deed in Kansas will almost always use PLSS
• A deed in Virginia will almost always use metes and bounds
• A deed in Texas may use either, depending on whether the land was originally surveyed under Spanish/Mexican land grants or later US survey work

If you need to convert a PLSS description to GPS coordinates, use Township America's converter. If you are dealing with metes and bounds, you need a licensed land surveyor.

Getting GPS Coordinates from a Description

Once you can read a legal description, converting it to GPS coordinates is a matter of entering it into the right tool. Township America's PLSS converter accepts descriptions in the formats shown above and returns the center coordinates and boundary outline of the described parcel.

For real estate and title work, see how to find your property using a legal description. For bulk conversions, see how to batch convert PLSS descriptions.

Related Guides

• How to convert section township range to GPS coordinates
• How to find your property using a legal description
• PLSS glossary
• Real estate industry tools