Texas Survey

In the Texas Survey System, a survey is the original land grant tract — the polygon that was patented to a specific grantee by the Spanish crown, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, or the State of Texas. Surveys are named after either the original grantee (most common) or the surveyor who walked the boundaries.

A typical survey-name description reads:

John Smith Survey, Bexar County
W. H. Jenkins Survey, Karnes County
León Survey, Cameron County

How Surveys Work

Every Texas survey has:

• A name — usually the original grantee's name, sometimes the surveyor's
• A county — surveys are scoped to a county
• A polygon — defined by the original surveyor's field notes (metes and bounds), not by a regular grid
• An abstract number — assigned by GLO for indexing (so you can have both a survey-name and an abstract reference for the same tract)
• A patent date — when the original grant was finalized

The polygon shape is irregular — Texas surveys follow natural features, the original surveyor's actual measurements, and the contours of the land. They are not square the way PLSS sections are.

When to Use the Survey Name vs. the Abstract

Most Texas tracts can be referenced either way:

• John Smith Survey, Karnes County — the survey-name reference
• A-321 Karnes County — the abstract reference

Both resolve to the same polygon. In practice, certain regions favor one form over the other:

• South Texas / Rio Grande Valley — survey-name dominates
• East Texas / Coastal Bend — abstract-only dominates
• West Texas — Block & Section dominates (where the "survey" is the named railroad survey, like T&P)

For the full treatment, see Surveys, Leagues, and Labors.

Sizes and Units

Texas surveys are commonly sized in inherited Spanish colonial units when the grant predates statehood:

• League (Legua) — ~4,428.4 acres, used for cattle ranching grants
• Labor — ~177.1 acres, used for farming grants (1/25 of a league)

See League and Labor for the colonial measurement context.

Reading a Survey Name in a Deed

Texas deeds typically combine the survey name with the abstract number and county:

All of that certain tract or parcel of land out of the
W. H. Jenkins Survey, Abstract No. 198, Karnes County, Texas,
being more particularly described as follows: [metes and bounds calls]

The survey name identifies the broader polygon. The metes-and-bounds calls describe the specific parcel within the survey.

Survey vs. Section

In TXSS, "Survey" is the named grant polygon. "Section" — when it appears — is a one-square-mile subdivision within a railroad-survey block (e.g., Block 5, Section 14, T&P Survey). The two terms are easy to confuse but mean different things. The PLSS analog of a Texas "Section" is the PLSS section. The PLSS analog of a Texas "Survey" is closer to an entire township grant — but the analogy is loose because PLSS sections are uniform and Texas surveys are not.