Plat
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Image:Ottawahillsplatmap.gif A plat is a map, drawn to scale, showing how a piece of land is divided. Township plats were created by the U.S. General Land Office surveyors to show the distance and bearing between survey corners, and sometimes topographic or vegetation information. City, town or village plats are divided into lots with streets and alleys, usually for the purpose of selling the described lots; this is known as subdivision. After a plat is filed, legal descriptions can refer to lot numbers rather than portions of sections. Plats can also legally dedicate land for road and other rights-of-way.
A Plat of Consolidation is when a landowner takes several parcels of adjacent land over and consolidates them into a single parcel. In order to do this the landowner will usually need to make a survey of the parcels and submit the survey to the local public works department which would have to approve the consolidation.
A Plat of Subdivision is when a landowner, or municipality, divides land into smaller parcels. If a landowner owns an acre of land for instance and wants to divide it in three pieces, a surveyor would have to take precise measurements of the land that is to be divided and submit the survey to the planning board/public works department of the controlling local government which would then have to approve it.
History
The creation of a plat map is also an important step in the process of incorporating a town or city according to United States law. Because the process of incorporation must be done at a courthouse, the incorporation papers for many American cities may be stored hundreds of miles away in another state.
For example, the original plat for the city of San Francisco, California, filed in 1849, is kept at the Clackamas County courthouse in Oregon City, Oregon, then the capital of the Oregon Territory and the site of closest federal land office. This is because California did not become part of the United States until 1850.