[or-roots] interpreting patent info

[Leslie Chapman]

I am going to have to speak real general here folks as don't have a patent
or the relevant sites handy but first of all I will advise you that here;
http://www.outfitters.com/genealogy/land/twprangemap.html

is a site that will explain at length how the surveying system for each part
of the country relates to the "real world" for purposes of the Oregon and
Washington patents I can explain in more specific detail, you will have a
description that reads "some" quarter or "some quarter of some" quarter of
"blank" section, Township "your number here" north or south and Range "your
number here" Range east or west, Willamette Meridian.

Now you're saying to yourself I don't have anything like that, all I have is
the following gibberish;
NE. 1/4, NW. 1/4 Sec. 2, T. 21 S., R. 11 W., W.M.   Well folks that what you
have to pay us surveyors the big money for is we can translate this bit of
gibberish in Northeast quarter of the Northwest quarter of sectin 2,
townshipe 21 S. Range 11 West Willamette Meridian.

See how simple that is when you speak gibberse!

What, you still don't know where that is? Well it is just over there a bit
from my window, but of course that probably doesn't help much. What the
Willamette Meridian is, is an arbitrary point up somewhere in the
neighborhood of Champoeg that was designated as the base point for all land
surveys in the Northwest. The above mentioned website can tell you exactly
where it is but it really isn't important. What is important is
understanding that a township is a 6 mile square, approximately, so if you
have a description as above it tells you I am about 126 miles south and 66
miles west of that rock up by Champoeg or wherever it is.

I was thinking that;

http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnis/web_query.gnis_web_query_form

would enable you to worry your way into the location of your specific
Township and Range. what this will give you is if you know the general
location of the patent, this second site will give you a digital topog map
of the area.

 You have to fill in some of the blanks on that page and then you will get a
page that gives you a bunch of options of which you want

View USGS Digital Raster Graphic (DRG)  which will bring up a digital topog
map of the site you have selected; If you have the patience for it you can
click over on the left side of the screen where it says map size and pull
down large and then you will get some\thing more than a postage stamp, but
these are fairly good resolution images and take a while to load and
sometimes won't load, be patient.

Anyway the best i could come up with applies only to Oregon;

http://libweb.uoregon.edu/map/GIS/Data/Oregon/glo_home.htm

if you put your curser (sic) over the map it will give you ranges of
townships and ranges in each of 9 quadrants for the state of Oregon, I note
the baseline is closer to Portland than I remembered it.

Okay just went back online and checked this page, find teh appropriate
quadrant, click on it and you will get an index of a bucnch of zip files for
that quadrant. The kicker here is these files are historic maps. I just
downloaded a map of where I grew up, it is so inaccurate I hardly recognize
it but is important because I believe the road going across the map is the
old territorial road.

Your other option is access to a metsker or Forest service map of the area
in question or else a hard copy USGS topo map which will have township and
ranges on them. Some public libraries have such maps, or you can buy them at
some sporting goods stores and university books stores.

For those having questions in Douglas Co, the Co surveyors office has all
their maps online for free, plus some fairly good explanations for finding
the stuff.

Now that I have thoroughly confused the issue I feel obliged to offer my
help for anyone who wants to email me direct;

khanjehgil at presys.com and I can for sure pin it down for you in western
Oregon as I have hardcopy of most of the topos here and I should be able to
extrapolate to the rest of the Northwest for you without too much trouble.

Les C