The government rectangular survey method is a legal description for land. It references principal meridians and baselines designated throughout the country.
For example, in Florida the principal meridian crosses through Tallahassee.
Imagine if you took a giant piece of graph paper and plopped it down over the ground.
Those squares on the graph paper would make up sections and townships.
There are 36 sections in every township, running in rows of 6 across and 6 down.
Each section is one mile squared, or, in other words, 1 mile in width and 1 mile in height.
Also, each section consists of 640 acres.
We'll use our 640 acres per section as the starting point when solving the problem below:
Homeowner Hank owns the Southwestern 1/4 of the Southeastern 1/4 of the Northwestern 1/4 of Section 8. How many acres does Hank own?
640/4= 160
160/4= 40
40/4= 10
Hank owns 10 acres
See the video above for an explanation of how to solve this government rectangular survey math problem.