1. Proclib: How to Find Township, Range and Section
Tool for investigating Public Land Survey Location

2. Purpose
Many times air photos are listed by PLS designation (this is certainly the case for Bellingham). To discover the air photo that covers a certain location it is necessary to first find the Township Range and Section identifier. The internet program described below does just that,

3. For Washington State Go to Web Site

4. Click on “Open in Map Viewer”
Make sure the TRS box is clicked (click if necessary)
Zoom into location where PLS data desired and it should appear (see next slides).

5. Zoom in until you can read text

6. Keep Zooming

7. North East corner of Township 38 Range 03 Section 32
Now you can read Township Range and Section each as two digit numbers (see next slide)

8. National Data Site– anywhere in USA – a little difficult to read but with patience you should be able to use it.
And turn on PLSS data layer (see next page)
Zoom in, if you’re real lucky you can read the TRS.

9. Click on Map

10. Click on PLSS Tools

11. For PLSS CadNSDI Layer click “Add to Map”

12. Hit Add to Map and then zoom in wherever you wish

13. Zooming in

14. To enhance the display:
Click on the + by Layers
For the PLSS CadNSDI layer box move the slide bar to 100%
Click the three gray bars icon and select Gray

15. Keep Zooming in and we can now read the Township, Range and Section
Keep Zooming in and we can now read the Township, Range and Section. For example the circle is for 97N54W11 or 97 north township, 54 west range and section 11.

16. If you are having a hard time reading the Section numbers, you can Zoom in on your broswer.
This shows the results after browsing in a bit for Chrome.
Originator: p. buckley, 6/12/2012 contact:
Updated: p.buckley 5/15/2018, 5/10/2019