Mo nro e Co unty Surve y Utility Trohn Enright-Randolph Rachel Oser Monroe County Surveyor Professional Surveyor Kurt Babcock Cassidy Raley GIS Coordinator Survey Technician Office of the Monroe County Surveyor - Indiana
T he Public L and Surve y Syste m The end of the American Revolution left the fledgling US government deeply in debt and vehemently opposed to taxation. In order to solve their mounting money problems, the decision was made to open up the vast Northwest Territory to land hungry settlers. But before the land could be sold and settlement could commence, the government needed a way to accurately describe the location and area of the new parcels. Thus began the most ambitious land development project of all time. Ohio was the first state to be surveyed. Indiana was next in line, and while many parts of the process would be refined, the method is still the basic foundation of the PLSS system.
T he Public L and Surve y Syste m The first step in the original survey process was to run a baseline and a principal meridian to be used as an x and y axis for accurately describing each parcel of land. The next step was to run a north‐south range line every 6 miles. Next, the grid of township and range lines was further divided into 36 sections.
Mo nume nt Re c o rds The original section corners and section lines are the framework for property descriptions for our entire state. Section corners are used to establish and retrace property boundaries.
Mo nume nt Re c o rds If the coordinates of section corners are collected, then the location of each corner can accurately be displayed on an aerial map or GIS system.
Re fe re nc e Surve ys First we started by scanning surveys, survey related documents and indexing them by township/range, section, year, surveyor, source, and a Reference Survey ID number
nde xing Re fe re nc e Surve ys- I
Re fe re nc e Surve ys- Uplo ading We had thousands of these tie‐sheets that we wanted to make digitally accessible to the surveyors and we also had thousands of survey records that we needed to share. Our first step was to upload all of the documents to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a free online library with a mission to "Provide Universal Access to All Knowledge”, and every document that we uploaded gets a predictable and permanent URL.
Arc GI S De skto p- Ge o database Starting with point location data on the section corner monuments that our Office has collected over the last 20 years. The locations are of varying quality, very little of it is survey grade. Then ran an ArcMap model that connected the section lines to our section corner points, generated feature class polygons, and incorporated topology into the geodatabase layers so if we get a more accurate location of a point and need to adjust it, the section lines and polygons are automatically adjusted.
Arc GI S De skto p- Ge o database Our next step was to integrate fields from the Reference Survey database such as corner id, corner name, Section Number, and Township, as well as the Internet Archive hyperlinks to the tie‐sheets. Our Office was very careful with data entry, instead of typing information, we set up every field with ArcGIS domains, which basically means that values are selected from drop‐down menus instead of typed in, this makes data entry quicker and more consistent.
Mo nro e Co unty Surve y Utility After all that, our backend was built and we were ready to share the data. Our Office published the geodatabase to ArcGIS online, and we built this Web App.
T hank Yo u- GI S T e am The Office of the Monroe County Surveyor received an Excellence in GIS award at the Indiana Geographic Information Council (IGIC) conference. The Survey Utility, a map‐based web app that helps professional land surveyors access Section Comers Monuments and historic records more easily online or via mobile device. This image cannot currently be displayed.
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