Geocode Section
Locate and download the boundary of a section inside a survey township as GeoJSON
This API finds a Public Land Survey System section based on its section number, range, township, and principal meridian.
For example, if you were looking at a survey plat in San Francisco, California, it might refer to the section as being section 31 in range R05W, township T02S, and meridian MDM. This means that the section falls inside the survey township located 2 townships south and 5 townships west of the Mt. Diablo Meridian and its base line, and as section 31, it is the southwest corner of that township.
This API enables you to download the GeoJSON for a particular range, township, meridian, and section number combination.
Request Parameters
The section number, between 1 and 36 (inclusive), specifies which section of the township should be returned.
The range specifies the numbered distance and bearing (east or west) from the principal meridian.
The township specifies the numbered distance and bearing (north or south) from the baseline associated with each principal meridian.
The principal meridian for the target survey. You can find a list of principal meridians in the United States on Wikipedia.
This can take any value below. The values are provided alongside their approximate count, based on the total area surveyed to that meridian.
Principal Meridian | Count |
---|---|
5th Meridian | 10342 |
6th Meridian | 9934 |
Mount Diablo Meridian | 6376 |
Willamette Meridian | 5033 |
Montana Meridian | 4191 |
New Mexico Meridian | 3994 |
Gila-Salt River Meridian | 3411 |
Boise Meridian | 2498 |
Extended Fourth Meridian | 2452 |
Salt Lake Meridian | 2429 |
Michigan Meridian | 1938 |
Indian Meridian | 1885 |
Tallahassee Meridian | 1749 |
San Bernardino Meridian | 1486 |
Louisiana Meridian | 1230 |
2nd Meridian | 1213 |
St. Stephens Meridian | 1187 |
3rd Meridian | 1135 |
Black Hills Meridian | 906 |
Choctaw Meridian | 645 |
Huntsville Meridian | 642 |
4th Meridian | 455 |
Ohio River Base | 393 |
Chickasaw Meridian | 307 |
St. Helena Meridian | 248 |
First Principal Meridian | 248 |
Humboldt Meridian | 224 |
Washington Meridian | 204 |
Cimarron Meridian | 194 |
US Military Baseline | 175 |
Uintah Meridian | 138 |
Wind River Meridian | 121 |
Between the Miami Rivers | 85 |
East of the First Meridian Survey | 80 |
1st Meridian | 49 |
Ute Meridian | 14 |
Your account’s API key. You can create an API key by registering for an account and copy and paste it from your account dashboard.
Response
When population is successfully calculated, a 200 OK response will be
issued, with Content-Type: application/json
. The body will be a GeoJSON
Feature with a Polygon geometry. The properties will be description
, an
appropriate full description of the section, and acreage
, of 640 acres.
In the event of an error, an error response will be issued, usually with a 5xx error code.
The error will be JSON-formatted, with an error
field describing the cause.
The error message if the extract request parameters were incorrectly formatted.
This response field will not be present if the extract succeeds.
Data Source
The boundaries and metadata for the survey townships and their sections is provided by the US Bureau of Land Management.
These boundaries should not be used as a substitute for surveying.