They used points such as trees, boulders, streams, roads, buildings and anything else that may have been near them as a reference for property boundaries. This system, which utilizes the completely subjective interpretation of natural features and markers by a land surveyor, is by no means new, but it’s also not going away anytime soon, either.īack in the day, when surveyors lacked sophisticated measuring systems and mapping tools, metes and bounds was a reliable option. In the United States, the fingerprints for this method of surveying property can be most easily found in the states that were once the 13 original colonies. A headright of this much land was granted to "all persons except Africans and their descendants and Indians living in Texas on the day of the declaration of independence." To any single man, 17 years or older, one-third league was granted (1476 acres).The metes and bounds system is nearly as old as land ownership itself, with evidence of it existing from as far back as Ptolemaic Egypt and the Roman Republic. "A league and a labor" was a common first land grant and consisted of a league of land away from the river plus one extra labor of good riparian (river-situated) land. Labors cannot exist without leagues.Ī labor is one million square varas. Leagues can be divided or undivided (some leagues exist without labors). When a league is subdivided, it is subdivided into 25 labors. Leagues and Labors (North and East Texas) Neither blocks nor tracts obey county lines. Tracts, found within blocks, are special categories. Original block lines were drawn before any official boundaries were created. Sections are numbered between 1 and 9,999, but can include fractions (as in 65.5)īlocks (groups of joined or non-joined subdivided surveyed land) are not restricted to rectangles or squares but based on survey layouts and individual property bounds. Townships and sections, only found in southern Texas, follow the same style as the Public Land Survey System but do not include ranges. This is because original measurement lines were drawn before county lines. These are Spanish grants, surveyed on the " metes and bounds" system of measurement, and are of irregular shape and size.Ĭounties are contained within railroad districts, but township/section, block, and league/labor measurements are not required to follow county boundaries. Below this are the Texas railroad districts, of which there are 12. In Texas, the highest level of land subdivision is the boundary of the state itself.
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