Surveyor’s Walk
Section 16 · Township 9 South, Range 6 West · Willamette Meridian · Polk County, Oregon
Where it sits in the township
The surveyor’s own plat of this township is kept by the Bureau of Land Management: BLM Oregon/Washington survey records for T9S R6W.
The same ground today
The aerial map needs JavaScript.
USGS aerial imagery. Red: the section’s own pieces. Dashed gold: Donation Land Claims that took the rest.
In the surveyor’s own words
Nobody has copied out the surveyor’s words for this section yet. The notes are out there, written in ink, probably mentioning a tree or two, or the lack of one.
Look it up yourself
- BLM Oregon/Washington survey records for T9S R6W (plats and field notes, free)
- BLM General Land Office Records (free). In the map search box choose 'Legal Land Description', then type the township and range. For this card, type T9S R6W, Willamette Meridian, Oregon.
Then paste what you find into your folder (start one by finding your land).
Ring the bell
Ask us to prepare this township: we copy out the surveyor’s words by hand and put them on this card. Nobody has asked yet. Be the first.
School land
Section 16 carries one of the school-section numbers. Under the federal school-land law for Oregon (1859), Sections 16 and 36 of every township were set aside for schools, and where a settler was there first, other land could be chosen in its place. The survey grid can’t say whether this section, or which parts of it, passed to the state, or who holds it today.
“Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That the following propositions be, and the same are hereby, offered to the said people of Oregon for their free acceptance or rejection, which, if accepted, shall be obligatory on the United States and upon the said State of Oregon, to wit: First, That sections numbered sixteen and thirty-six in every township of public lands in said State, and where either of said sections, or any part thereof, has been sold or otherwise been disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto, and as contiguous as may be, shall be granted to said State for the use of schools.”
The other school section in this township: Section 36.
Reserved earlier by the 1848 Territorial Act, § 20. Checked against the page image of the official scan.
Claims touching this section
- Donation Land Claim No. 45, about 159 acres
- Donation Land Claim No. 46, about 321 acres
Survey-grid facts: claim numbers and record acres from BLM’s survey grid map.
Sources
- Bureau of Land Management, national survey grid map (CadNSDI): township, section and claim lines
- U.S. Census Bureau geocoder: county and state
- USGS The National Map: aerial imagery
- 43 U.S.C. § 751 (how sections are numbered)
- 11 Stat. 383
- Act of February 14, 1859, ch. 33, § 4, 11 Stat. 383, 383 (35th Cong., 2d Sess.), “An Act for the Admission of Oregon into the Union.”
Permanent link: https://parcelchronicle-refdesk.drdavesullivan.workers.dev/walk/OR33-T9S-R6W-S16