> I would imagine a technician digitizing thousands of abstract lines does not really
> care about a few hundred feet here or there.
Interestingly, I'm pretty sure that the GLO GIS was generated in house and with full access to all of the GLO records. I can recall visiting the GLO Surveying Division more than a decade ago and seeing the fellow in charge of the whole effort at his work station. I'm pretty sure that they had some sort of satellite imagery to use to register things against, too.
I have no problem with a rough approximation being used as a first attempt, but for the crude approximation not to be easily improved is a gigantic flaw in the system.
I am just trying to understand what you are talking about from beginning to end. So the original surveys and patents are not shown properly on several public maps. But then you say that many of those lines are not actually property lines any longer. So my question is this: Do the public maps reasonably (+/- 50’) show the property ownership lines of today? Not being from Texas, I am not familiar with the importance of where the original patents were if they are not property lines today other than being good references to the property corners and lines that are property corners and lines today.
Many of the states I have worked in do not show the original section lines and PLSS lines as patented, but only show the current property lines. Sometimes even some subdivisions or portions thereof are not shown because the lots have been re-subdivided and only the current property line configuration is shown.
Could you enlighten us as to the importance of having the original patent lines shown even when they are not property lines today? I am sure there must be something happening that only happens in Texas. TIA.
> Could you enlighten us as to the importance of having the original patent lines shown even when they are not property lines today? I am sure there must be something happening that only happens in Texas. TIA.
Sure. Because the land grants covering that portion of Dimmit County were all made by the State of Texas as individual metes and bounds pieces surveyed over decades by many different surveyors, each with incomplete knowledge of what had been done before him, scraps of land got omitted from the pattern. Those scraps of land that were never granted are now owned by the Permanent School Fund of the State of Texas. It doesn't matter who has been occupying them or what they *think* they own, the State's title to the surface and the underlying minerals is intact.
The prevailing form of oil and gas development in that area consists of horizontal drilling, drill holes that may run for more than a mile in some direction across several land grants. That is harmless enough if under one lease from one owner, but if the State of Texas is thought to own land just somewhere in the middle of things, that can be a major roadblock until that somewhere is determined or that it can be shown that it is really a nowhere.
That large blank space that looks like a vacancy on both the GLO and TxRRC GIS maps, along with its underlying minerals, would be owned by the State if in fact it was never covered by an original grant. The process of determining whether it was or not is one of subtraction, of locating all of the individual grants and seeing what is left. Where the boundaries of those grants have not been used as private ownership boundaries for quite a long time, but have in effect disappeared within some larger ranch, the exercise can be a challenge.
It becomes even more of a challenge when neither the Official County Map published by the GLO nor the GLO and TxRRC GIS mapping even shows all of the original grants in any way. So, disappearing boundaries of disappearing grants is a much different situation that the checkerboard of PLSSia where you begin with an idea of what the whole layout looks like, and don't have to wonder where Section 530 really is. :>
Have you made direct contact with the GIS in question. Seems to me that's where you need to go.
> Could you enlighten us as to the importance of having the original patent lines shown even when they are not property lines today? I am sure there must be something happening that only happens in Texas.
The other element to the problem is a strictly practical one of land title insurance. It is a not uncommon idea that where excess acreage above the number of acres called for in a patent (or a title issued before the Republic of Texas) exists in a land grant, that the State of Texas retains some undivided interest in the land within the grant as a ratio of the excess to the entire actual acreage. There is even a Texas Attorney General's opinion issued in the 1940's that is based upon that premise.
To use a real life example, if a survey that was originally described as containing 640 acres in the patent issued by the State of Texas is later found by resurvey to actually contain 1158.2 acres within the boundaries described in that patent, then there is a view prevailing that the State has retained an undivided interest in the tract that amounts to the ratio of the excess (518.2 acres, in this case) to the actual contents of the grant as determined by resurvey (1158.2 acres in this example). So under that logic, in the example I give, the State of Texas has retained a 518.2/1158.2 = 44.74% undivided interest in the land within the grant.
There is an underwriting manual of at least one title insurer that describes the status of excess acreage in that way. In fact, the Texas legislature passed a law (Section 4 of the Vacancy Act of 1939) that permitted an owner of a land grant with excess acreage to purchase the excess from the State for cash in exchange for what basically is a Quitclaim Deed from the State to any interest it might have had. A less than careful reading of that act might be construed as a confirmation that the State retained some undivided interest in the excess acres that it proposed to sell.
The contrary status of excess acreage in an original land grant was decided in 1953 in the case of Foster v. Duval County Ranch Co. et al (260 S.W.2d 103), but that doesn't mean that the whole question of excess acreage doesn't still exist as a practical problem because insurers think that it is. So it is only prudent to make some sort of determination of whether excesses exist that will need to be dealt with in some way short of writing a check for half a million dollars to get a quitclaim deed from the State with no warranty of anything.
I agree Kent that it's an in-house thing at the GLO.
First, how does an accurate GLO map really benefit the average taxpayer. They are not going to spend a lot of money on something that doesn't have a payback. Heck, they are still asking for donations for the maintenance of the old records, documents, etc. which is really needed.
John Harmon
> First, how does an accurate GLO map really benefit the average taxpayer. They are not going to spend a lot of money on something that doesn't have a payback. Heck, they are still asking for donations for the maintenance of the old records, documents, etc. which is really needed.
I see it as one of the fundamental functions of the Texas GLO as originally contemplated by the Texas Constitution. The GLO is the archive for the most important land title documents pertaining to virtually every piece of land in the state and the Official County Map is the index to all of the bits and pieces.
So, when the index basically says "hey, this map looks like there's a vacancy there" when the title to that land formally left the State of Texas in 1877 upon the issuance of patent, then the GLO is performing the exact opposite role as the reason for which it was organized.
As the GLO under the present commissioner continues on a scavenger hunt for what money can be wrung out of State land, I can see things going South fast where there are gross mistakes on county maps that make it look as if the State actually has an interest where none actually exists.
There are many abstracts in Texas where a tract or several tracts have been cut out of
a 640-acre original patent. If these tracts are 10 acres or more, they do not need to
go through subdivision planning. I have never had a title company closer or title company
officer ask me if the parent tract, 640 acres, had an excess. No owner wants to pay for
an entire survey of the 640 acres just to lay out the 10 acres. They probably should,
but I have never seen it happen. Maybe in the larger world of Texas, the question is
asked.
I have re-surveyed a parent tract less a dozen tracts excepted and sold off.
If the title company can do simple addition, the acreage of the twelve tracts plus the
acreage of my survey should add up to 640 acres. If there is an excess in the abstract,
I never have seen the title company or the purchaser's attorney complain or even ask.
I have not surveyed in every corner of Texas; only about 80 counties of the 254 counties.
> If there is an excess in the abstract, I never have seen the title company or the purchaser's attorney complain or even ask.
I assume that you're using the term "abstract" to mean an original grant or original survey upon which patent was issued (or title issued from Spain or Mexico). Here is a link to Stewart Title Company's online underwriting manual:
Virtual Underwriter - Vacancies & Excess Acreage
As you can see, that company considers excess acreage in an original land grant to represent an undivided interest that the State of Texas retains in the land. I'm aware of claims in the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been made against title policies on the basis of a State undivided interest arising from the excess in the original survey of which the tract is a part.
As I mentioned, I think that the statement in the underwriting manual I've linked above is wrong, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a question that any prudent surveyor would want to address unless he or she didn't mind getting pulled in as a party to a large claim on a title policy when the survey exception was deleted and excess is later discovered.
Again, thanks for the explanation. It really helps those of us not familiar with the State of Texas processes.
From the discussion so far, it seems that most land owners just let sleeping dogs lie since they know that the State is not going to spend the money to go back to the patents and rebuild the fabric of the land status the way that you have. Unless they have a really valid reason for going through this exercise, they will just continue as everyone else is and then if a problem comes along later, just throw up their hands and exclaim that it was not their fault.
> From the discussion so far, it seems that most land owners just let sleeping dogs lie since they know that the State is not going to spend the money to go back to the patents and rebuild the fabric of the land status the way that you have.
The sad truth is that the State of Texas appears to be on a scavenger hunt for every last buck that can be wrung out of public lands, even those that don't really exist. As a result, the State is beginning to assume a role that it has not in the past.
I do a fair amount of work in connection with claims made on title insurance policies and have seen just in the last two years three major claims ($500k to $1mil) made on the basis of some assertion by the State of an interest in land. In all three cases, the interest turned out to appear to be invalid for different reasons, but it cost a good bit of money to demonstrate that fact and I would not have liked to be the surveyor holding the bag for the survey that failed to disclose the facts were the claim to have been otherwise.
Dittos on your State of Texas comment.
That area not showing a survey or abstract number was owned by the State of Texas
as late as 1995. Later it was sold to James Gates Byrd, who currently pays taxes on
the entire property. There is some kind of small tract along the west line of the Byrd
tract near the NW Corner.
> As I read that, it sounds as if the GLO Official County Maps were just digitized and jockeyed around as seemed appropriate to fit features shown on the USGS quad sheets. This would certainly explain why some major errors present on a GLO County Map have ended up reproduced in full in the TxRRC GIS.
>
> Has any surveyor ever gotten any corrections made to the TxRRC GIS? If so, who did you deal with?
No I never have made any corrections to that site, nor would I know who to ask. However, I suspect that the grants came from tnris. They have shape files for every county in Texas. Most of the time, the survey lines are close to what the aerial photos show for occupation, which may or may not be right, as you well know.
They are EXTREMELY handy for reconnaissance and planning though and they are an excellent tool.
Typically, when I get the lines figured out, I then move them to the proper location so the digitized lines are correct.
Someone from the RRC says they are updating their OTS using well location
maps that come in. Some maps have coordinates on the abstract or survey corner,
but usually just have a coordinate for the well location. Horizontal well locations
show penetration point and a variety of other coordinate locations.
I have not seen any updates.
> That area not showing a survey or abstract number was owned by the State of Texas
> as late as 1995. Later it was sold to James Gates Byrd, who currently pays taxes on
> the entire property.
LOL! I assume that you're looking at an even worse GIS maintained by the Dimmit County CAD? This is why the FUBAR area on the GLO GIS is so bad. The mistakes on it spin out in so many other different databases based upon it.
three.rivers
> Someone from the RRC says they are updating their OTS using well location
> maps that come in. Some maps have coordinates on the abstract or survey corner,
> but usually just have a coordinate for the well location. Horizontal well locations
> show penetration point and a variety of other coordinate locations.
>
> I have not seen any updates.
Yes, but I would hope they wouldn't update on the permit plat alone as the RRC allows for "scaled" ties to the survey lines.
As far as the horizontal goes, you are correct but the surface, point of penetration, first take point, last take point, and bottom hole must all have coordinates and two applicable ties to both the lease/unit and survey lines, preferably at right angles.
three.rivers
You are correct and I agree. In the late 90's, the Texas Board of PLS send out
a sample plat for a well location. Some surveyors argued that you have to do
a boundary for each well location. That battle will probably never end.
three.rivers
I've seen many RRC location plats that were signed by Landman with scaled ties to survey lines. I have somewhat of a problem with that. I would'nt have a problem if there was no signature. It appears to the layman that landmen have expertise in that field and we all know that do not.
three.rivers
I have never known a landman that was a registered surveyor.
I have known three title company presidents that were surveyors.