Legal descriptions can be very useful for describing a property or forestry site. In the Northwest, we start at the Willamette stone just southwest of Portland. From this point 6 mile by 6 mile blocks called townships build in all 4 directions. The numbering is “townships” in the north or south direction and “ranges” in the east and west direction. So if we are looking at a site in downtown Portland, it might be in Township 2 North and Range 2 E, often written as T2N, R2E. A township block is further divided into 36 1 mile by 1 mile sections. See the chart below for how they are numbered. Common formats for a TRS description are T2NR2E25, or 2N2E25 to denote section 25.

If you are working from a plat map, tax map or other legal document the above TRS is further divided into smaller pieces of the section. See the chart below with some of the ways this is done. For most of our photography flight planning and historical file searching the resolution to the nearest section is adequate.