Records
Missouri keeps one of the better land survey record systems in the country, it is free to search, and hardly anybody outside the profession knows it exists. Here is how to use it.
The odd part
If you went looking for Missouri's land survey records, you would probably try the Department of Natural Resources, or a mapping agency, or the Secretary of State. You would not think to try agriculture. That is where it is.
The Land Survey Program sits within the Missouri Department of Agriculture, under the Division of Weights, Measures and Consumer Protection, and it operates out of Rolla rather than Jefferson City. The arrangement is historical rather than logical, and it is the single biggest reason people fail to find these records.
Land Survey Program
P.O. Box 937, Rolla, MO 65402-0937
(573) 368-2315
landsurv@mda.mo.gov
The state began building a central repository for land survey documents in the early 1970s. It now holds roughly two million documents in digital format.
These are the records that determine boundaries in practice: original government survey field notes and plats, corner records showing how surveyors have recovered and re-established section corners over the years, and filed surveys from private practitioners. Surveyors, title insurers, recorders, attorneys and real estate professionals all lean on them.
Both are hosted at apps.mda.mo.gov and both are free.
What you will not find. A drawing of your specific back yard with the fence on it. Most residential parcels have never been individually surveyed and filed. What you will find is the framework the corners of your property are measured from, plus any surveys that happen to have been done nearby. That is genuinely useful to a surveyor and often underwhelming to a homeowner.
One reason the Missouri records are as good as they are: the state actively pays to keep the underlying corners findable.
The Land Survey Program contracts with county surveyors under the County Surveyor Co-op Program to re-monument corners of the Original Government Survey and record accurate state plane coordinates for them. As of July 2017 the state pays $300 per monumented corner.
That matters more than it sounds. The original General Land Office surveys set corners with wooden posts, stones and blazed trees. Two centuries later a great many of those are gone. Every corner that gets recovered, monumented and recorded is one fewer ambiguity in every boundary that depends on it, which in PLSS country is a lot of boundaries.
See survey monuments and pins for what these markers look like on the ground and why they outrank measurements.
It can save you money. If a recent survey of your parcel or an adjoining one is on file, a surveyor starts from a much better position and the job is cheaper. Worth checking before you commission anything, and worth mentioning if you find something.
It will not settle a dispute. Records are evidence, not a determination. Two recorded surveys can disagree, older records can be superseded, and interpreting conflicting evidence is exactly the professional judgment a licensed surveyor is licensed for. See when two surveys disagree.
It will not replace a survey. A filed document from 1978 tells you where corners were then. It does not tell you whether the pin is still there, whether the fence built in 1994 respects it, or whether anything has changed since.
Program details and fees change. Confirm current specifics with the Land Survey Program before relying on them. Our editorial and sources policy explains how we handle this.
Send us what you turned up along with the address. A licensed surveyor can tell you quickly whether it is useful.