Section

Key Takeaways

• A section in the government survey system is one mile square, which is one square mile or 640 acres.
• Thirty-six sections make up a township, so a township covers 23,040 acres.
• Sections divide into aliquot parts without any measuring: a quarter section is 160 acres and a quarter of a quarter is 40 acres.
• In Washington, survey descriptions are stated by section, township, and range measured from the Willamette Meridian, and the county auditor indexes records of survey by quarter-quarter section, township, and range (RCW 58.09.110).

What It Means

A section is the basic building block of the government survey system, also called the rectangular survey or the public land survey. It is a square of land one mile on each side, which is one square mile, or 640 acres. Thirty-six sections make up a Township, the six mile by six mile block the survey lays out from a principal meridian running north and south and a baseline running east and west.

Sections are what make the Government Survey method usable for describing property. Because a section is a known size, it can be cut into aliquot parts that need no field measurements to identify: the northeast quarter of a section is 160 acres, and the northeast quarter of that quarter is 40 acres. A description such as the south half of the northeast quarter of a named section, township, and range identifies 80 acres without a single distance or bearing. Where the grid does not produce a clean square, because of a lake, a river, a reservation boundary, or the curve of the earth, the leftover pieces are described as Government Lots rather than as aliquot parts.

How It Works in Washington

In Washington the government survey grid is the backbone of rural and unplatted Legal Description work, and the state's own county lines are written in it. The county boundary statutes run lines by calls such as south along said east line of section thirty-one, township twenty-one, north, range four east, Willamette Meridian (RCW 36.04.170). Washington land in the survey system is measured from the Willamette Meridian, so a complete description names the section, the township, the range, and the meridian.

The section is also the filing key for survey records. RCW 58.09.110 requires the county auditor to keep indexes of each record of survey by the name of owner and by quarter-quarter section, township, and range, which is how a surveyor or a title examiner finds the prior work on a parcel. The state survey standards in WAC 332-130-050 require a survey map to show the section, township, and range and the quarter-quarter of the section the surveyed parcel lies in, and where the parcel sits in a government lot, a donation land claim, or a similar tract instead of an aliquot part, the map must identify that tract and call out the corresponding approximate quarter-quarter. Platted city lots are described by lot, block, and plat name instead, which is why a broker meets section, township, and range mostly on acreage and rural listings.

Example

Tom lists bare land in a Washington county described as the south half of the northeast quarter of Section 22, Township 20 North, Range 15 East, Willamette Meridian. The buyer, Grace, asks how much land that is. A section is 640 acres. The northeast quarter is 640 divided by 4, which is 160 acres. The south half of that quarter is 160 divided by 2, which is 80 acres.

Grace offers $9,500 an acre, so 80 acres times $9,500 is $760,000. Before she removes her feasibility contingency she orders a record of survey. The surveyor stakes the aliquot lines out from the section corners and maps a county road right of way crossing the north edge of the parcel and covering 4 acres. Grace still buys all 80 deeded acres, but only 76 are usable for the building sites she wants, so she and Tom reprice at 76 acres times $9,500, which is $722,000. The legal description in the deed does not change, because the aliquot description still describes exactly what she is buying.

Common Mistakes and Exam Traps

• A section is one square mile and a township is 36 sections. Calling a township one square mile, or a section 36 square miles, is the classic reversed answer.
• A quarter section is 160 acres and a quarter of a quarter is 40 acres. Each of in a legal description divides again, and the description is read from the smallest piece backward to the largest.
• Section on an exam can mean the survey unit or a numbered part of a statute or contract. Inside a legal description it always means the one square mile survey unit.
• Metes and bounds descriptions use distances and directions from a point of beginning, while government survey descriptions use section, township, and range. A description can combine them, such as metes and bounds run from a section corner, but the acreage shortcut only works on true aliquot parts.