okiesurveyor

Have you ever wondered what all of those letters and numbers on your deed description mean? Or why most of the roads in Oklahoma are one mile apart? This is the first in a series of articles to familiarize you with the system by which we convey your most valuable commodity, your land. In the late 1800’s government surveyors were commissioned to lay out the public lands (Oklahoma Territory) into a grid in preparation for sale or grant to the public. These grids were to be 6 miles square and were known as townships. They would be later divided into 36 smaller units, which are our modern day sections of 640 acres each. In most areas they were then divided into even smaller squares or Quarter Sections (160 acres). Iron posts were set at the corners of the townships and stones were placed at all of the section and quarter corners. Some of these stones can still be found today if the area is wooded or otherwise has not been disturbed. The point of origin of these sections is known as the...

I don’t know.  But that is what was specified in the original instructions to the government surveyors when the State of Oklahoma was first laid out. I do, however, have a neat fact about the chain that was used when measuring the original sections. It is called a Gunters chain and it was 66 feet long. It was that specific length for a reason; to calculate acreage of tracts of land. 80 Gunters chains placed end to end measured one mile (5280 feet). 80 chains x 80 chains = 6400/10 = 640 acres. So the product of the number of chains measured on each side of a tract of land divided by 10 equals the number of acres Example: 5 chains x 5 chains = 2.5 acres 10 chains x 10 chains = 10 acres 20 chains x 20 chains = 40 acres 40 chains x 40 chains = 160 acres How does that work?  I don’t know. But one acre of land would then, by default, be the sum of 66’ x 66’ (1 chain x 1 chain) divided by 0.10 = 43,560 square feet, which is the number used in al...