Guides
Learn this before you spend money on it
Most of what people get wrong about surveys is cheap to fix beforehand and expensive to fix afterward.
These are written for property owners, not for surveyors. No jargon that is not explained, no filler, and Oklahoma specifics wherever they matter. If something here is unclear, that is worth telling us, because it means the page needs work.
Understanding your property
How to read a legal description
Section, township and range, quarter calls, and what a metes and bounds description is telling you.
Read →The Indian Meridian and the PLSS
Why nearly every Oklahoma deed measures from a line surveyed in the 1870s, and what that means today.
Read →Monuments, pins and what they mean
What that iron rod in the corner of your yard is, why it matters legally, and why you should not move it.
Read →Buying, selling and building
Survey versus mortgage inspection
They cost different money and mean very different things. Plenty of buyers learn this too late.
Read →Do I need a survey to build a fence?
The cheapest question in this whole business and the one most likely to save you a lawsuit.
Read →Easements, plainly explained
Utility, access, drainage and prescriptive easements, and what each one lets somebody else do on your land.
Read →When something goes wrong
When a neighbor disputes the line
What a survey settles, what it does not, and where adverse possession fits in Oklahoma.
Read →Encroachments and what to do about one
A shed over the line, a driveway across the corner, a fence built by eye in 1974.
Read →Two surveys, two answers
It happens more than you would think, and there is a rational explanation almost every time.
Read →Oklahoma specifics
Osage County is different
The mineral estate belongs to the Osage Nation. Here is what that changes for a surveyor and for you.
Read →Flood zones around Tulsa
The Arkansas River, mapped floodplain, and how elevation certificates fit into insurance.
Read →Platting and lot splits
What it takes to divide a parcel around Tulsa, and who has to approve it.
Read →Background
A short history of surveying
From rope stretchers on the Nile to GPS. Three of the four faces on Mount Rushmore were surveyors.
Read →How surveyors get licensed here
What a PLS license requires in Oklahoma, and how to verify one before you hire anybody.
Read →The tools, and what they change
Chains, transits, total stations, GPS, drones and lidar. Better instruments did not make boundary law simpler.
Read →