Survey Tracts (Land Grid)
Queryable Shapefile Has coordinates
The Texas land grid: 311,392 patent survey tracts as polygons.
Get the data
Heads up on Original: the Commission does not publish this table on its own. It publishes All Layers by County, which this was parsed out of — so Original gets you that whole file, not just this table. Every other format is this table alone.
Free. You will be asked to confirm an email address before the files are built — that is the only gate, and it is there so we can tell you when a large export is ready.
What this is
Texas is not on the Public Land Survey System. It came into the Union with its public land already granted, so there is no township-and-range mesh to fall back on -- a Texas lease is described by ABSTRACT and SURVEY, and this is the only thing that puts one on the ground.
311,392 tracts over 310,731 distinct abstract numbers, covering 702,953 square kilometres against a Texas land area of 695,662. Each carries the abstract number, the original grantee, and the block and subdivision levels where RRC records them.
Geometry is stored on EPSG:4326, transformed once from the NAD27 the Commission publishes. That is the trap this data is famous for: NAD27 drawn on a modern basemap puts Texas features about 100 metres from where they belong and nothing looks wrong. The transform is checked rather than assumed -- RRC's well layer publishes each point on both datums, so the reprojection is compared against arithmetic the Commission did itself, and agrees to a median of 2 metres.
The shapefile packages are still mirrored whole, under the five 'Layers by County' datasets, for anyone who wants the Commission's own bytes.
What you can do with it
Turn a legal description into a place. Find which tract a well sits in, which tracts a lateral crosses, or the boundary of an abstract you are about to lease.
Gotchas
The abstract number is unique within a COUNTY, not statewide. Abstract 1 exists 254 times.
50 of the 311,392 tracts are not OGC-valid: rings that cross themselves in RRC's own data. They are served as published rather than repaired, because ST_MakeValid would hand back a different polygon from the one the Commission drew. Wrap them if your query needs validity.
Survey boundaries are the Commission's rendering for mapping. They are not a title document and no acreage here should be relied on for a transaction.
Record layout
12 columns.
gis_survey_tract
12 columns
| # | Column | Type | RRC name | Meaning | Lookup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
county_code
|
text | — | The three-digit county code, taken from the name of the package this row came out of. 'FED' for the federal offshore bundle, which is a real part of the statewide layer: merging only the numeric counties silently drops everything in federal waters and still looks like a complete Texas map. | — |
| 2 |
abstract_n
|
text | — | The abstract number. This is the key of the Texas land grid and the thing a lease description names -- and it is unique within a COUNTY, not statewide: abstract 1 exists 254 times. 310,731 distinct values over 311,392 tracts. | — |
| 3 |
level1_sur
|
text | — | The original grantee the survey is named for, as RRC records it: 'ANCELL, R L', 'E PERRY', 'MILLSAP, H'. This is the 'survey' half of 'Abstract 193, E Perry Survey'. | — |
| 4 |
level2_blo
|
text | — | The block, where the survey is organised into blocks. Often blank. | — |
| 5 |
level3_sur
|
text | — | The section within the block. Often blank. | — |
| 6 |
level4_sur
|
text | — | A fourth level of subdivision, where RRC records one. Usually blank. | — |
| 7 |
abstract_l
|
text | — | RRC's label form of the abstract number, as drawn on the map. | — |
| 8 |
scrap_file
|
text | — | An RRC internal reference to the source map sheet. | — |
| 9 |
shape_area
|
text | — | The area of the shape in the source file's own units on NAD27 degrees, as RRC computed it. Use ST_Area on the geometry if you want real units. | — |
| 10 |
shape_len
|
text | — | The length of the shape in the source file's own units on NAD27 degrees, as RRC computed it. Comparable between rows; not a survey measurement and not metres. | — |
| 11 |
geom
|
geometry | — | The shape, on EPSG:4326, transformed once from the NAD27 the Commission publishes. Served as WKT, which QGIS, PostGIS and ogr2ogr all read; the GeoJSON, GeoPackage, KML and Shapefile downloads are built from it. NAD27 drawn on a modern basemap is about 100 metres out, which is the reason this is transformed here rather than left to the reader. | — |
| 12 |
ingested_at
|
timestamptz | — | When the upstream pipeline last wrote this row. Not an RRC field — it is EZRRC's provenance stamp, and it is what the freshness badge is measured against. | — |
Where this comes from
- Published by
- Texas Railroad Commission — the original page
- Original format
- Shapefile ArcView shapefile — several files that must be kept together.
- RRC publishes
- Updated twice a week (Twice a week, with the county shapefile packages.)
- RRC download link
- GoAnywhere MFT
- Record layout manual
- Our table
texas.gis_survey_tract
EZRRC is an independent mirror of public-domain data published by the Texas Railroad Commission. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the RRC. For any legal or regulatory purpose, verify against the official RRC release.