# How Land Is Surveyed in Every Oil and Gas State > PLSS, metes and bounds, and the states that are neither. How land is surveyed and described in 20 oil and gas states, what the legal description on your deed means, and where to look the records up free. Source: https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/ Publisher: Berlin Royalties, a veteran-owned oil and gas mineral and royalty buyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, buying for its own account since 2014. Call or text 918-984-1645. License: free to quote and cite with attribution to Berlin Royalties and a link to the source URL. Land Surveys ## How land is surveyed, state by state Half the country is on a grid and half is not, and the states that are both are where mineral owners lose money. Here is how land is actually described in each of the twenty states we work in. [Open the Section Map](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/section-township-range-map/) [Ask a Landman, Free](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ask-a-landman/) The legal description on your deed or division order is the first real obstacle most mineral owners hit, and it is written in whichever system happened to be running when your land was first granted. Get the system wrong and the acreage will be wrong, which means the valuation will be wrong. ## The three systems ### The rectangular survey, or PLSS The grid. Land is divided into six mile square townships, each holding 36 sections of roughly 640 acres, and each section is halved and quartered down to whatever size you own. A description reads like the northeast quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 14, Township 12 North, Range 8 West. Every rectangular survey counts outward from a **principal meridian** and its base line. There are 36 named principal meridians, conventionally counted as 37 because the Fourth Principal Meridian gets counted twice. The critical consequence: **township and range numbers repeat under every meridian**. A T2N-R5E exists under a dozen different origins and means a dozen different pieces of ground, which is why the meridian call is not optional in a state that has more than one. ### Metes and bounds Directions and distances from a starting point, running the boundary around and back to where it began, historically calling to trees, stones, creeks and the neighbor's line. The eastern states never entered the federal grid, so this is what you get in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and most of Kentucky. It describes the land precisely at the moment it was written and then decays as the trees rot and the creeks move. ### Texas, which is neither Texas kept its own public domain at annexation and never entered the federal survey. Land is described by original survey and abstract number, on foundations laid by Spanish and Mexican grants, and out west by railroad blocks that look like a grid but are not one. ## Which system your state uses | State | System | Principal meridians | | [Oklahoma](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/oklahoma/) | Public Land Survey System | 2 || [Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/texas/) | Not PLSS | None || [New Mexico](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/new-mexico/) | PLSS over Spanish and Mexican land grants | 1 || [Kansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/kansas/) | Public Land Survey System | 1 || [North Dakota](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/north-dakota/) | Public Land Survey System | 1 || [Montana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/montana/) | Public Land Survey System | 1 || [Wyoming](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/wyoming/) | Public Land Survey System | 2 || [Colorado](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/colorado/) | PLSS on three meridians, plus land grants in the south | 3 || [Utah](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/utah/) | Public Land Survey System | 2 || [California](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/california/) | PLSS on three meridians, plus Mexican era ranchos | 3 || [Louisiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/louisiana/) | Mixed: PLSS, arpent long lots and private claims | 2 || [Arkansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/arkansas/) | Public Land Survey System | 1 || [Ohio](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/ohio/) | A patchwork of survey districts | 2 || [Pennsylvania](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/pennsylvania/) | Metes and bounds | None || [West Virginia](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/west-virginia/) | Metes and bounds | None || [Alabama](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/alabama/) | Public Land Survey System | 3 || [Alaska](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/alaska/) | PLSS in principle, largely unsurveyed on the ground | 5 || [Kentucky](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/kentucky/) | Mixed: metes and bounds, plus a state rectangular survey in the west | None || [Michigan](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/michigan/) | PLSS, with French private claims along the water | 1 || [Mississippi](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/mississippi/) | Public Land Survey System | 5 | ## The ones worth knowing about before they cost you - **[Ohio](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/ohio/)** has the most fragmented survey history in the country. A township in the Western Reserve or the Military District is five miles square, not six, and the Virginia Military District has no sections at all. - **[Louisiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/louisiana/)** runs sections, French arpent long lots and confirmed private claims on the same plat, and townships there routinely carry far more than 36 sections. It is also the state where a severed mineral interest can expire after ten years of nonuse. - **[Utah](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/utah/)** numbers everything off one of two origins, and the Uinta Basin sits exactly where they overlap. - **[Mississippi](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/mississippi/)** has five principal meridians, more than any other state we work in, and a Section 16 is very often school trust land rather than private minerals. - **[Alaska](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/alaska/)** can name a section that has never been monumented, because much of the state carries the grid as a protraction diagram rather than a real survey. - **[Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/land-survey/texas/)** assigns abstract numbers per county, so the same abstract number points at different land in nearly every county in the state. ### Send us the description and we will read it back to you. What it covers, how many net mineral acres it actually is, which survey system it is written in, and whether anything is producing on it. Free, no obligation, and the answer is the same whether or not you ever sell anything to us. [Ask a Landman](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ask-a-landman/) [Get a Free Valuation](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/free-valuation/) ## Related - [The interactive section, township and range map](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/section-township-range-map/), for the states on the grid - [How to find out if you own mineral rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/find-out-if-you-own-mineral-rights/) - [Depth severance](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/depth-severance/), where ownership is cut by depth instead of by boundary - [The Duhig rule](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/duhig-rule-overconveyance/) and [fixed versus floating NPRI](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/fixed-vs-floating-npri/) - [Free well and production records for twenty states](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/well-records/) - [The mineral glossary](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/glossary/) Compiled from BLM, state land offices, state archives and statute, current as of 2026-08. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm or a licensed surveyor. Nothing here is a boundary opinion.