This Public Land Survey System (PLSS) DLG attribute information includes multiple files, in dBASE III (DBF) format and Word format. They are described below.

100plss.dbf - this file contains attribute codes for all the public land survey system items
100plupd.doc - a Word table containing all the attribute information, with notes on the new and old codes.
pl.doc - DLG standards document from USGS on the public land survey system data in Word format. This file is listed separately for download, and contains the basic document plus appendices A and B.
plcd.doc - Appendices C and D of the above document; land grant codes.

The DBF file was derived from several text files, as was the Word table file 100plupd.doc; where information is duplicated in the files it will be identical. The Word file, however, contains more information than the DBF file. This is due mostly to the nature of the data and a database. The DLG data when imported has major and minor codes, all classified as numerals. The text documentation had a mixture of text and numerals in the attribute code columns. This did not translate perfectly into a database format that could be used as a lookup table.

The documentation for this data came from the U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS), as text files. There were two sets of files; the original data users guides, and an updated version of standards from 1995. The files included here are a combination of the new and old files. The DBF file contains ONLY the current (new) codes. The Word table file contains the current data as well as notations on the older codes. BE AWARE that DLG data on the WWW may be new or old vintage, and may have old as well as new coding. Using information from both types of files you should be able to resolve conflicts over unclear codes.

In many cases for the public land survey system data the text description in the minor field cannot easily be transformed into numerals in a lookup table. In these cases a 9999 has been inserted into the location in the file where the text values were. The original values have been moved to the BEGINNING of the description field, and placed in parens (). An example of where this was necessary can be found in the section number codes; the major code is 301, and the minor code is the actual section number. Township and range codes are similar.

With these files you can import the DLG data into ArcView (and probably into Arc/Info as well, although that is yet to be tested) as a polygon or line file. The information displayed in the attribute files WILL be different depending on which option you choose. The polygon import places considerably more information in the attribute files. The line import overlays more easily onto other data, and has it’s own attribute information. You may wish to perform different imports for display purposes but should be aware of these differences.

For the PLSS polygon data checked there was a lack of consistency in how the attribute information was organized. In the sample data used, there were 4 major and minor code sets. Code 306, origin of survey, was located in major/minor1 for one data set, and major/minor4 for another. Code 301 (section number) varied in the same way. The lookup table, 100plss.dbf, has three fields; major, minor, and description. All the major/minor combinations have the same codes, so that lookups can be performed on any of the fields.