Texas Survey System (TXSS)

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The Texas Survey System (TXSS) exists because Texas does not use the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), instead instituting a similar system that is based on Spanish land grants. The state is split into 12 railroad districts, which follow county lines. Another way of dividing the state is into townships and sections (South Texas), leagues and labors (North and East Texas), and blocks and tracts (West Texas – NOTE: NOT CENSUS BOUNDARIES), areas that, though differently named based on the region of the state, denote the same layer of geographical data.

The TXSS data contain 3 separate layers. The Texas RRC District layer contains the geographic boundaries for the 12 railroad districts. The Texas Bay Tracts layer represents a special set of 3213 survey areas that are present in bays all along the East coast of Texas. The Texas Land Survey Layer splits the state into 304,145 areas comprising tracts, sections and labors, identifiable via their code in the field abstract.

Also available is the Public Land Survey System (PLSS).

TXSS Data Map

Highlights:

• Widely used methodology to categorize large swaths of featureless areas of the state.
• Widely used system that translates large areas into comprehensively understood geographies.
• Applications include state oil and gas commissions for administering lease programs, right of access management programs, local government parcel mapping, and Internet search and discovery.
• Easily tag all your points with their location based on the TXSS coordinate system.

Available File Formats:

• Available for the latest version of Maptitude and TransCAD
• Available for other applications. Contact us to request the data in other GIS file formats (e.g., shapefile, KML, KMZ, GeoJSON).

Price: FREE* For users of the current version of Maptitude or TransCAD

FREE Download

“Over the past several years I’ve spent dozens if not hundreds of hours trying to figure this out. But the Maptitude PLSS data is wonderful because it covers most of the US and not just Oklahoma and includes Texas which is unique and covers quarter sections and below. Miraculous. I’m not sure that you Yankees understand just how useful this data is to us folks in flyover country. But it’s great. Thanks.”

Larry D. Lahman | Mitchell DeClerck | Oklahoma’s Oldest Law Firm Founded 1893

*Requires latest Maptitude or TransCAD license