Tag: BLM

Understanding Townships

This entry focuses on a part of our earlier discussion, Understanding Location Data. For greater context on what we will be addressing, please read that post first. One of the more confusing aspects of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the concept of “townships.” A “township” can refer to two different things. Both are part of the PLSS measurement system but have…

Understanding Location Data

Claims handled by the Bureau of Land Management are not mapped by latitude and longitude, as many maps now use.  Instead, many of these claims harken back to an older form of surveying called the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), a  measurement system that may seem confusing to the uninitiated, but was a great step forward in the time that it…

Welcome!

We are excited to have launched The Land Patents! There are many public land patents across the US. Yet, few people are able to discover the “who,” “what,” and “where” of public land patents. While this is a matter of public record, we aim to make it a matter of a simple search to answer all these questions and more!…