Section, township and range
Section, township and range are the three coordinates that locate a parcel within the rectangular survey grid.
They appear on nearly every rural Minnesota legal description, and they are easier to read than they look once the order is clear.
Read backwards#
A description like "the SW1/4 of section 22, township 108 north, range 17 west" resolves cleanly if you take the last part first.
Range 17 west — a six-mile-wide column, counted west from a principal meridian.
Township 108 north — a six-mile-tall row, counted north from a baseline.
Together those two identify one survey township: 36 square miles.
Section 22 — one square mile within it, 640 acres.
The southwest quarter — 160 acres in the corner of that section.
The numbering is serpentine#
Sections are not numbered left to right in rows.
Number 1 sits at the northeast corner. Numbering runs west to 6, drops one row, runs east 7 to 12, drops again, and alternates down to 36 at the southeast corner.
That pattern is worth knowing, because reading a county land sale list means locating sections repeatedly, and assuming a conventional grid puts parcels in the wrong place.
Survey township is not civil township#
A distinction that causes real confusion in Minnesota.
A survey township is a grid unit — six miles square, defined by the survey.
A civil township is a unit of local government, with a board, taxing authority and in many counties a role in land use decisions.
They frequently share boundaries and they are different things. A civil township may cover more or less than one survey township, and the name of the civil township has no bearing on the grid coordinates.
That matters practically: when a county requires a township's written position before processing a conditional use permit, it means the civil township, and finding it means knowing which local government covers the parcel rather than which survey square it sits in.
Where it appears#
Legal descriptions on deeds, mortgages and tax statements for rural property.
Parcel identification numbers in many Minnesota counties, which encode these coordinates directly — one of the reasons PIN formats differ so much between counties.
Tax-forfeited land sale lists, almost universally.
County GIS systems, which are searchable by section, township and range and are the fastest way to put a description on a map.
Finding a parcel from a description#
Faster than it looks, and worth being able to do.
Most Minnesota counties publish a GIS or property information system searchable by section, township and range. Entering the three coordinates puts the square mile on a map in seconds, and the quarter and quarter-quarter narrow it from there.
The DNR and state GIS resources do the same statewide, which is useful when a county's own system is limited.
For anyone reading a tax-forfeited land sale list — which is nothing but these descriptions — that lookup is the difference between a page of coordinates and a map of what is actually being offered.