One meridian, two initial points, and ribbon farms that cut the grid. Here is what the legal description on your deed, lease or division order is actually telling you, and where to check it for free.
Michigan uses plss, with french private claims along the water. One meridian, two initial points, and ribbon farms that cut the grid.
A principal meridian and its base line are the origin of a rectangular survey. Township and range numbers count outward from that origin, which means the same township and range numbers repeat under every meridian. The meridian is the part of the description that says which grid you are on.
Benjamin Hough and Alexander Holmes began work in 1815. The base line, now Eight Mile Road in the Detroit area, was set roughly 78 miles north of Fort Defiance to clear Lake Erie and the state line, and Holmes set the first base line monument on 24 October 1815. Michigan ended up with two initial points: Hough's 1816 point, later found to be 935.88 feet north of where it should have been, and a second set by Joseph Wampler when surveying westward after 1824. Both are monumented at Meridian-Baseline State Park.
Before the rectangular survey could proceed, the French private claims had to be settled. Aaron Greeley surveyed them between 1808 and 1810.
In Wayne, Monroe and a few other early settled counties, a legal description may reference a numbered private claim rather than a section. Those are long narrow riparian tracts that cut across the section grid, they are not aliquot parts, and quarter quarter acreage math does not apply to them.
The State Archives of Michigan holds all original survey documents. Deeds are with the county Registers of Deeds.
What it covers, how many net mineral acres it actually is, and whether anything is producing on it. Free, no obligation, and the answer does not change if you never sell anything to us. We do this every day and it usually takes us an hour.
Ask a Landman Get a Free ValuationCompiled 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, and a description that matters to a transaction should be run by a title attorney or a licensed surveyor in the state where the land sits.