Virginia era grants, and a tax map that does the real work. Here is what the legal description on your deed, lease or division order is actually telling you, and where to check it for free.
West Virginia uses metes and bounds. Virginia era grants, and a tax map that does the real work.
West Virginia has no principal meridian and no PLSS. It was part of Virginia until 1863 and inherited the Virginia system, so there is no township, range or section in a West Virginia description.
Title runs from Virginia grants before 1863 and West Virginia grants after, on the same warrant, survey and patent chain used in Virginia and Pennsylvania.
West Virginia is the state where the survey system and the working identifier have come completely apart. Old metes and bounds calls to trees, stones and neighbors' lines are often unmappable on their own terms, so what actually identifies a parcel in practice is the county, the tax district and the tax map and parcel number. West Virginia is unusual in keeping separate mineral parcel tax maps alongside surface parcel maps, precisely because the mineral estate is so widely severed there. The recurring failure for out of state heirs is assuming a surface parcel number identifies their mineral interest. Those are two different parcels, with two different numbers, on two different maps. Older unmapped mineral records often locate only to a county and a district, not to a parcel at all.
Deeds are with the county clerks.
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.