Utah PLSS Converter — Section Township Range to GPS

Utah uses two principal meridians: the Salt Lake Meridian and the Uintah Meridian. The Salt Lake Meridian, established in 1855 at the corner of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, is the governing reference for the vast majority of the state. From that single urban origin, the survey grid extends across all of Utah's diverse terrain — the Wasatch Front, the Colorado Plateau, the Great Basin, and the canyon country of the Colorado River drainage. The Uintah Meridian governs a more limited area in the northeastern corner of the state, primarily the Uinta Basin (Uintah and Duchesne counties), where a separate survey was conducted to support settlement and resource development in that distinct geographic basin.

The Salt Lake Meridian has one distinctive characteristic: its origin at Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City. All township and range descriptions in Utah (outside the Uintah Basin) are measured from this central urban point, which means a property can be described as 1S 1E SLM and be located immediately adjacent to downtown Salt Lake City. This urban origin makes Salt Lake Meridian township numbers relatively low for parcels near the population center of the state.

Utah's land is predominantly federal. The Bureau of Land Management administers approximately 22 million acres, the Forest Service manages about 8 million acres, and the National Park Service manages some of the most visited parks in the country including Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, and Bryce Canyon. All of this federal land is described in PLSS terms. Utah also has significant oil and gas production in the Uinta Basin and on the Colorado Plateau, active mining operations for coal, potash, and copper, and a growing renewable energy sector — all of which depend on accurate PLSS navigation.