Appropriate Use
GPS Stakeout helps you find the approximate location of property corners and walk your boundaries in the field. It is a navigation and visualization aid — not a substitute for a professional land survey. This page explains what the app is good for, where its limits are, and when to call a licensed surveyor.
What the app is for
GPS Stakeout turns a deed description, a PLSS section call, a single bearing-and-distance line, or manually entered coordinates into corner points, then guides you to them with your device's GPS. Good, appropriate uses include:
- Locating approximate corners on land you own or are authorized to be on, so you can look for the existing monument (iron pin, rebar, stone).
- Walking a boundary to understand a parcel's shape, size, and direction before you buy, sell, log, hunt, or plan.
- Scouting before a survey — getting oriented so you can brief a surveyor or find likely corner locations faster.
- Understanding a deed — seeing metes-and-bounds calls or a PLSS description drawn on a map.
- Education and recreation — learning how survey systems work, or keeping to known boundaries in the field.
What it is not
GPS Stakeout is not a boundary survey and does not produce a legal determination of where a property line is. The corners it shows are computed from the description you provide and located with consumer GPS, so they carry real-world error. Specifically, do not use the app to:
- Establish, certify, or dispute a legal property line;
- Set permanent monuments or markers;
- Site a building, fence, driveway, well, or other improvement relative to a boundary;
- Resolve an encroachment, easement, or ownership question;
- Subdivide land or support a conveyance or plat filing.
Only a licensed land surveyor can make those determinations, and in most jurisdictions the law requires it.
Accuracy realities
The position you see is only as good as two things: the GPS fix and the anchor. A phone's GPS is typically accurate to roughly 10–30 ft, and worse under tree canopy, near buildings, or in wet foliage; an external GNSS receiver improves this but does not make it survey-grade. And every corner is measured from your anchor — a boundary anchored at ±15 ft can never land closer than about 15 ft, no matter how good your GPS is later. Read Accuracy & Anchoring before trusting any position, and treat the on-screen confidence ring as guidance, not a guarantee — a steady reading can still be wrong.
Data sources have limits
PLSS section corners come from the BLM's public CadNSDI dataset, which is a georeferenced representation of the record — useful for getting close, but not a substitute for a monument found on the ground. Deed parsing depends entirely on the quality of the description you enter or scan; OCR can misread numbers, and descriptive or monument-based deeds may not fully resolve to corners. Always sanity-check the parsed result against the original document.
Respect property, law, and safety
Finding a corner on a map is not permission to be there. Get the landowner's consent before entering property that isn't yours, and don't trespass. Boundary, survey, and land-use laws vary by state and county — you are responsible for complying with the rules where you are. And in the field, watch your surroundings: terrain, water, wildlife, and traffic deserve more of your attention than the screen.
When to hire a licensed surveyor
Call a professional whenever the answer carries legal or financial weight — buying or selling land, building near a line, placing a fence, resolving a dispute or encroachment, subdividing, or any time you need a defensible, certified boundary. GPS Stakeout can help you prepare for that visit and understand the result, but it cannot replace it.