TerraTracer · free & open source

Draw a property boundary from its written description.

Deeds and mining-claim certificates describe land in metes and bounds — “beginning at an iron pin, thence South 0°30′ West 660 feet…”. Type those calls into the form below and get a survey plat, the corner coordinates you can walk to, and a Google Earth file — with every calculation checked and every assumption declared.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, stored, or seen by anyone.

How it works

1 · Transcribe

Copy the bearings and distances from your document into the form below — or start from an example and swap in your own calls.

2 · Verify

The engine walks the description on the real curved Earth and runs five layers of checks: closure, acreage, statute, and more. A problem is reported, never hidden.

3 · Walk it

Download the plat, open the corners in Google Maps, or load the KML in Google Earth and stand on your boundary.

Your property fill in the form from your document — no special format to learn

Loading the survey engine (about 10 MB, cached after the first visit)…

Property / claim name

Type

Datum of the coordinates

Distance units

Bearings measured against

Where the description starts

Beginning at a point I have coordinates for (most deeds) Tie line from a monument (mining claims)

What marks the starting point

Latitude (decimal or DMS)

Longitude

Where the coordinates came from

Boundary — each call in order, ending back at the start

Acres stated on the document (optional)

Bearings go in exactly as your document writes them: “S 0-30-00 W”, “N 89°30' W”, or an azimuth like “AZ 137.5”.

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Result

Download plat print-ready HTML, works offline Download KML for Google Earth Download GeoJSON for GIS tools