This polygon dataset is a compilation of all the townships in Snohomish County derived from the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) grid dataset. The PLSS grid is the master coverage of the PLSS maintained by the Assessor's Office. It contains linework and attribute information for townships and ranges. It is compiled from recorded surveys and plats, coordinates and linework supplied by private surveyors, Snohomish County Public Works Survey, cities, Washington State Department Of Natural Resources (DNR) and the United States Department of the Interior - Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Standard BLM methods are used to construct the aliquot grid. In coastal areas, the aliquot grid may not apply for many of the coastal sections, it has been constructed for the purposes of land title and defining map extents for automated routines.

PLS Township. In the Public Land Survey System a Township refers to a unit of land, that is nominally six miles on a side, usually containing 36 sections, some of which are designed to correct for the convergence of meridians or range lines, with boundaries conforming to meridians and parallels within established limits.WA Public Land Survey Townships MetadataClick for downloadService URL: https://fortress.wa.gov/dnr/arcgisext/weba_ext_prod4/rest/services/Cadastre/WADNR_Cadastre_OpenData/MapServer/8

This data was pulled from the BLM's MLRS database for each state using the case code (380910,380913,380911). The data was joined with the calculated centroid for each section in the states presented. Some sections did not have the proper designation or a point for plotting and in those instances the developer made every attempt to make a point in the logical place.For each state the first division of the PLSS for each state was obtained from either: a local government agency, the BLM Navigator, or from the USGS. Data was pulled in November of 2021. A snapshot of mining claims listings in each state from the BLM’s MLRS online database (Date Specified on Mining Claims Map) For each state, the projection of the PLSS layer is the projection that was used to create the claim points. From the PLSS first division for each state, the centroid was calculated using the calculate geometry function in ArcMap. A SectionID field was added to generate unique values. These unique values consist of the Meridian, Township, Range, and Section identifiers formatted to match the MTRS field when pulling the mining claims listings. Fields where concatenated together to generate the Section ID. Mining claims with a status of Active, Pending, Submitted, and Filed claims were queried from the Bureau of Land Management’s MLRS online database using the PUB MC Serial Number Index under the Public Mining Claims Reports. The claims data was joined with the SectionID data to assign an easting and a northing, based on the MTRS description for the given claim from the MLRS database. A “claim point listings” feature class was generated using the coordinates from the centroid of the section it is listed to be within. Some plans or notices did not plot. plans or notices that did not plot were visually inspected by and modifications were made if possible, to display the plans or notices. The reason for plans or notices not plotting was due to protracted blocks and the absence of a first division polygon. The section numbers for protracted blocks are greater than 36, so in areas where claims were present on protracted blocks, the section numbers were reassigned the section number of which the general public would refer to it as (1-36 only). For any states where the first division was not available for a Township, section centroid points were made with the INFERRED PLSS description assigned to the points. Understand that assumptions were made during this process. Polygons were not made for missing sections.

The TIGER/Line shapefiles and related database files (.dbf) are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). The MTDB represents a seamless national file with no overlaps or gaps between parts, however, each TIGER/Line shapefile is designed to stand alone as an independent data set, or they can be combined to cover the entire nation. The primary legal divisions of most states are termed counties. In Louisiana, these divisions are known as parishes. In Alaska, which has no counties, the equivalent entities are the organized boroughs, city and boroughs, municipalities, and for the unorganized area, census areas. The latter are delineated cooperatively for statistical purposes by the State of Alaska and the Census Bureau. In four states (Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia), there are one or more incorporated places that are independent of any county organization and thus constitute primary divisions of their states. These incorporated places are known as independent cities and are treated as equivalent entities for purposes of data presentation. The District of Columbia and Guam have no primary divisions, and each area is considered an equivalent entity for purposes of data presentation. The Census Bureau treats the following entities as equivalents of counties for purposes of data presentation: Municipios in Puerto Rico, Districts and Islands in American Samoa, Municipalities in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The entire area of the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas is covered by counties or equivalent entities. The boundaries for counties and equivalent entities are as of January 1, 2017, primarily as reported through the Census Bureau's Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS).

Government Land Office maps (GLOs) are a result of the effort to survey all United States public lands before settlement. Starting in 1812 land was divided into square six mile blocks called townships, then subdivided into sections and ranges. Each subdivided area was surveyed and given its own map or GLO. During this process surveyors were required to indicate cultural resources such as roads and Indian trails and standardized symbols were used to represent geographic features. These GLOs are now maintained by the Bureau of Land Management as part of the official Land Status and Cadastral Survey records. As land was divided into parcels of individual ownership additional cadastral survey maps were created over time. For this reason there are often multiple GLOs or "cadastral survey maps" for one township / range, generally numbered one through four. For this seamless GLO layer, DAHP focused solely on the more historical GLOs which were usually listed as image number one or two for that specific township / range in the BLM Cadastral Survey records. In some cases no GLOs were available for review. Such areas included National Forest Lands, National Parks, Indian Reservations, and remote wilderness areas.