Coverage
Provinces, survey systems and formats
LandLookup.ca covers the four western provinces. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have full Dominion Land Survey (DLS) coverage — quarters, halves, sections and legal subdivisions — and British Columbia is covered twice over: the Peace River Block DLS grid in the northeast, and NTS/BCGS well-style locations everywhere in the province.
Coverage by province
Alberta
- Systems
- DLS — quarters, halves, sections and LSDs
- Meridians
- W4 · W5 · W6
- Survey data
- About 7,200 townships of surveyed corner coordinates from the Alberta Township System (ATS).
- Example
- 12-52-24-W4section 12, township 52, range 24 west of the 4th — southeast Edmonton
Saskatchewan
- Systems
- DLS — quarters, halves, sections and LSDs
- Meridians
- W1 · W2 · W3
- Survey data
- Surveyed township fabric adapted from ISC's SaskGrid.
- Example
- 19-17-26-W2section 19, township 17, range 26 west of the 2nd — near Moose Jaw
Manitoba
- Systems
- DLS — quarters, halves, sections and LSDs
- Meridians
- E2 · E1 · W1
- Survey data
- Original-survey legal descriptions from the Government of Manitoba, including the older first-system townships in the south. Ranges east of the Principal Meridian run 1–26.
- Example
- NE-25-10-5-E1northeast quarter of section 25, township 10, range 5 east of the Principal
British Columbia
- Systems
- DLS in the Peace River Block, plus NTS/BCGS locations province-wide
- Meridians
- W6 (Peace River Block) · NTS quads 82–114
- Survey data
- Peace River Block DLS grid from the BC Energy Regulator; NTS/BCGS computed by exact graticule math per B.C. Reg. 536/2004.
- Example
- d-96-H/94-A-15quarter unit d, unit 96, block H on 1:50,000 sheet 94-A-15 — Peejay field
Grid extents
These are the ranges of values a valid description can use. Anything outside them — a section 37, an LSD 17 — is rejected before a lookup runs.
- Townships
- 1 to ~126, numbered northward from the 49th parallel
- Ranges
- 1–34 west of each meridian; 1–26 east of the Principal Meridian in Manitoba
- Sections
- 1–36 per township, numbered boustrophedon from the southeast corner
- Quarters
- NE, NW, SE, SW — plus N, S, E and W halves
- LSDs
- 1–16 per section, numbered serpentine from the southeast
- NTS quads in BC
- 82, 83, 92, 93, 94, 102, 103, 104 and 114
A worked example
Enter 12-52-24-W4 — section 12, township 52, range 24, west of the 4th Meridian. Township 52 sits about 300 miles north of the U.S. border; range 24 counts west from the 4th Meridian at 110°W (the Alberta–Saskatchewan border). The result is the full square-mile section in southeast Edmonton, centred at 53.476038, -113.405612. The same input box accepts a quarter (NE-14-48-1-W5), a half (WH-6-52-23-W4) or an LSD (4-12-52-24-W4).
Limitations
Unsurveyed and water-clipped townships
Townships that were never surveyed, or whose fabric is clipped away by lakes and rivers, are absent from the provincial datasets. When a description falls in one of these gaps, the tool falls back to a theoretical projection of the grid and flags the result so you know it was not anchored to surveyed corners.
NTS is an ideal graticule
NTS/BCGS positions are computed from the exact latitude–longitude grid defined by B.C. Reg. 536/2004. The officially published NAD83 grid corners can differ from the ideal graticule by up to roughly 100 m in northeast BC.
Not a legal survey
Results are navigation and reference grade. They are not legal land-survey records and cannot substitute for a survey by a licensed land surveyor. See how lookups are computed for accuracy details and data sources.
Same coverage, offline
The iPhone app carries the full four-province survey fabric and base maps on-device, so every lookup on this page also works with no signal at all.
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