Section lines are used in land surveying to show property lines and narrow down the amount of land to be surveyed. They can also be used to section parcels for township surveys. The standard measurement is one square mile, but can be determined by the surveyor. Section lines make it easier to survey rough terrain and prevent errors in initial surveys.
A section line is used in land surveying as a means of showing a viewer the distinct property line between two separate parcels of land. A section line is also used in mass land surveying applications as a means of narrowing down the amount of land that needs to be surveyed at a time. These lines are used to show the surveyor the amount of variance in elevation or terrain within each section, which in most standard surveys is a measurement of 1 square mile (259 hectares). Section line measurements, however, can be determined by the surveyor and as such are not meant to be in any specific dimension.
Section lines can be used for other purposes as well. One such example involves using a section line to section parcels that need to be surveyed in order to plot townships as they are created or when an existing township needs to be surveyed. Under such circumstances, although the measurement determination is typically determined by the person conducting the survey, the general measurement used to keep the easiest point-to-point survey locations is a standard of one square mile, containing approximately 640 acres. These created grid systems are used to ensure that the area that needs to be surveyed is completed in its entirety, so that the entire process does not have to be repeated if it is found that there was an area excluded from the initial survey.
On any survey grid created to produce a township survey, the typical grid consists of 36 sections subdivided by the use of section lines that evenly divide the area being surveyed at that time. This was originally done to correct any errors that may have occurred in an initial survey and to ensure that the same area does not occur again in the same or another location. The design of the older grids was extremely rough and left entirely to the devices of the surveyor, which proved detrimental when municipalities needed to know how far they could expand in one direction or another.
Using a section line method for creating grid patterns for square miles greatly reduced the confusion that might have been created by a survey based on warped sections that had no true mileage or size reference. The introduction of section lines also made it much easier to survey rough or uneven terrain. This was made easier because there was then an established standard for how far the scope of each survey point needed to be reached.
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