What the record can show
- Each recorded grant: its grantee, purpose, width, term and description.
- Blanket grants with no fixed route, and any later instrument that fixed one.
- Assignments, mergers and name changes that carried a grant to today's company.
- Releases, abandonments and partial releases.
- Where lines actually run on public pipeline maps, compared with the grant.
Documents that matter
- Right-of-way grants, easements, assignments and releases.
- Plats, as-built drawings, subdivision plats and road dedications.
- The surface owner's chain of title for the period of each grant.
- State pipeline maps. In Texas, the Railroad Commission's public map viewer shows many lines.
- Aerial photographs over time.
How a landman's work helps
- A list of every grant touching the tract, with its terms in a table.
- The chain of each grantee to the company in possession today.
- An overlay of each grant's description and the line's location.
- A note of every use with no grant of record.
What to send
- The county and state, and the tract.
- The company and the line, road or facility in question.
- Any grant you have, or its recording reference.
- The parties, for a conflicts check.
We are landmen, not attorneys. This page describes the land record in general terms. It is not legal advice, and every matter turns on its own instruments.