The grid, run around confirmed grants that came first. Here is what the legal description on your deed, lease or division order is actually telling you, and where to check it for free.
New Mexico uses plss over spanish and mexican land grants. The grid, run around confirmed grants that came first.
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.
Grants were made under Spain from 1598 to 1821 and under Mexico from 1821 to 1846. Most surviving documentation postdates the 1693 Reconquest, because earlier records were lost in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo obliged the United States to respect existing property rights, and two bodies sorted the claims out. The Surveyor General, from 1854, reviewed roughly 180 non-Pueblo claims and confirmed 46. The Court of Private Land Claims, from 1891 to 1904, reviewed 282 New Mexico claims and confirmed 82.
A confirmed grant was surveyed as a single irregular tract and patented by name. It is described by grant name and metes and bounds, not by section, township and range. The PLSS grid was then run around the confirmed grants, which is why grant boundaries leave sections cut into irregular remainders.
If a New Mexico deed names a grant, Tierra Amarilla or Anton Chico or Pablo Montoya, rather than a section, do not try to force it into section, township and range. The acreage and the boundary come from the confirmation survey and the patent, and the two systems only interlock at the edges. Grants also frequently carried community or common lands whose ownership history is contested, so it is worth confirming whether the interest being conveyed is in the individually allotted part.
Grant case files are at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives. Deeds are with the county clerks.
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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.