How to geografical points?

[LeeB]

In Arkansas, land plots are laid out according to township, section etc. Can anyone tell me how to find or figure actual geografic points , long/lat, for the plots?

[Gary_C]

You can get approximate coordinates from google maps, but you have to be able to find the corners to some degree of accuracy.

Second thing to try is to see if your county has some online GIS data. Or you could just call the county and see if they can give the coordinates to you. Some counties can and some can't or will not.

If you are proficient with google, you might be able to get the section and township lines on for reference. Then you could mark off the distances to the corners and it always shows the coordinates for the pointer.

[beenthere]

Try topographic maps for the plot you are interested

http://www.topoquest.com/map-detail.php?usgs_cell_id=36711

[LeeB]

I had previously tried a few internet seaches for ways to solvethis and ended up with a mess of virus troubles. Just as a warning, avoid mapsforfree.com. I'm still trying to get rid of all the crud from that one. New stuff pops up from it every time I scan for bugs. >:(

[DouginUtah]

New stuff pops up from it every time I scan for bugs. >:(

Have you run Malwarebytes?

As for lat/long, I have used Microsoft Streets and Trips to locate points. Just county lines, not section lines, but my version is 6 years old so I don't know what improvements have been made for 2012.

[reride82]

Maybe this will help.

http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/G6/Viewer.html
Zoom in on the tract of land you are working on and it lists the township and section.

[beenthere]

Also search Google Earth Pyatt, AR

and fly/zoom around in 3D with lat/long given wherever you put your pointer.

http://gmap3d.com/?d=78119&s=AR&f=ppl

This Pyatt?


 

[SwampDonkey]

Here in NB it's all online. It shows the aerial photo, plot boundaries and you can get lat/long off it to. With an account you can even search titles and ownership. So you may find it offered by a state agency like DNR or something.

[Slabs]

My place is rural and defined by section and quarter-quarter. It is my impression that the sections were laid out by surveyers in a survey (here it's circa 1934) and the section corners are fixed by survey not predicated upon geographical location but within the county, range and township therein.  A quick trip to the tax assesors office might yield a good clue as to how it's done in your state.

The young surveyers nowadays are coming around with the new "total stations" and GPS locators and are coming up with different solutions than the older surveyors who had to "prove the section" before they could define a quarter or quarter-quarter as mine had to do back in 1981. I had one recent crew miss one of my corners by some 200 feet and "crawfished" when I showed them my certified platt and moved their post to the one I had placed with my original survey. (Coincidentally, they had started out from an adjacent monument that I had also paid to be established).  Mud on their faces.  The older surveys traditionally remain paramount in court in the event of challenge.

Good luck

[LeeB]

Pretty much the same here slabs, but there must be some way to connect the points to a geografical point.

[Clam77]

Here in Iowa they used to use 4x4 or 6x6 stone/concrete posts as property boundry markers...

Your deed and/or abstract to the property (that the county assessor's office should have) should have measurements in it you can use to physically find the corners and from there if you have a smart phone or a GPS unit you can find the coordinates. 

It's a PITA.. but it can be done.

[beenthere]

LeeB
Apparently the sites mentioned won't do it for you?

Do you want to pick a spot on a map and get the lat/long/elev

or do you want to walk to a spot and get that info?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_coordinate_system

[LeeB]

Beenthere, I appreciate all the ideas, but alas, they didn't help. What I want to do do is get the points so I can walk to them. Kind of a check shot before I spend a fortune for a real survey.
Suffice to say that the surveys around here are a bit vague to say the least.

[reride82]

LeeB,
So you want to be able to find the Lat/Long for the property corners so you can create a point in your handheld GPS and so it can guide you to it? Is that what you are saying? If so, that will be sketchy at best. You can get approximate lat/longs from google earth or topo quad maps and it will get you close. Even if you had the right location, the precision of that handheld is +/- 50 ft at best. And depending on the monument that you are looking for be it stone, charred wooden post, iron pipe, , GLO brass cap, or the most recent use of rebar with the surveyors cap it become difficult. The firm I work for specializes in retraceing old mineral surveys, or mining claims, which were marked with chiseled stones can be difficult since most times it is a smaller stone 6"x8"x18" in alot of cases on a mountainside of stones So, depending on your survey, maybe a compass and string box is your best bet to get you established and then store the points once you have them found. The GPS units that surveyors use are RTK which means they have a base unit that broadcasts a correction factor to the rover unit and thus gets the accuracy down to +/- 1". And I agree that all to often some surveyors rely entirely too much on mathematics and not on original evidence. Like some sawyers, not all surveyors do a good job, but don't discount all of us young guys.  ;)

[SwampDonkey]

The experience I've had is we get within a meter of the GIS positions. If not, then often the line is in dispute or mapped wrong. You will find out from the owner or it will be obvious from fixed land marks like roads and power lines. I have found lots of boundary lines with a GPS. Sometimes just walking along you miss the old marks. With GPS you can often find old painted trees that have not been freshened up for 10 years. Pieces of paint the size of a quarter left on the tree. Also clearcuts, often those old dead scattered about scragely trees are old line trees once you get the GPS out. Paint and blazes on them, but they died when the adjacent woodlots were all cut off. There is enough old stubs scattered on the lot that it's not obvious at first.

[dukndog]

LeeB,

I don't know if your county has this yet, but Saline county does. If you zoom far enough, it gives the owners and such info. Give it a try and see.

http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/G6/Viewer.html?z=4&ll=529666.40176127804,3833906.9741141498&app=app_saline&title=Saline%20Co.%20Viewer

DnD

[JohnG28]

I would think a stop at your county clerks office would be a good start. When I bought my house last year I did, and was given a map showing the boundaries of my property. This included length of each side along with bearings of each as well. From this it was easy to find set rebar markers set about my property. They were pretty visible just walking my lines anyway though, which is not often the case, as you said. A compass app on a smart phone will give a pretty close direction and some will show bearings in I believe.  Good luck to you. 

[Brucer]

Be careful of those map services such as Google Earth. They can be off by a lot! I've chased a few people off my property who insisted they were on a public road because Google Earth "said so". The readings around here are off by several hundred feet.

Also be careful of GPS units. A good one will get you within a metre (3') but many of them are only good to about 10 metres (30'). Earlier this year I had a guy drive into my parking lot asking if this was a certain street address. I told him he'd driven past it at the entrance to my driveway about a quarter mile back. He kept glancing down and looking very confused. I suddenly realized he was looking at a GPS. "Are you sure", he asked. "Yep," I said, "I know what my address is, and my daughter used to rent the place you're looking for." He really, really wanted to trust that GPS unit.

I got a good handle on my longitude and latitude from government topographical maps. They show the latitude and longitude lines and they are at a scale where I can measure the distance to my property very accurately.

[SwampDonkey]

I got a good handle on my longitude and latitude from government topographical maps. They show the latitude and longitude lines and they are at a scale where I can measure the distance to my property very accurately.

That's interesting, because when I worked out there the topo  maps where too small a scale (20,000). We had to generate our own at 5000 scale to get anywhere near workable out on those mountains. Those smaller scale were useless for road and boundary layout. There was lot of bluffs and humps that wouldn't show up. ;)

[Brucer]

Sorry, left out a step. The maps show quarter section lines surrounding any of the built-up areas. I can scale these very accurately off the map. The local survey maps refer to the same quarter section lines so I can get a measurement to my boundaries.