Definition
In United States public land law, a range is a north-south column of townships established by the federal government's rectangular survey system. Ranges are numbered east or west from a principal meridian and serve as one of the two coordinate axes — alongside townships, which run north-south — used to identify the precise location of any parcel of federally surveyed public land.
A complete land description in the public land survey system typically identifies a section, township, and range. For example, a parcel might be described as lying within "Section 12, Township 4 North, Range 6 West" of a named principal meridian. Each range column is six miles wide, and each township within it is six miles square, subdivided into thirty-six sections of approximately 640 acres each.
Outside of land survey law, range appears in other legal contexts with distinct meanings:
1. SHOOTING RANGE / MILITARY RANGE: An area designated for firearms practice or military testing. Liability, zoning, and environmental law (particularly lead contamination) govern such facilities separately from the public land survey meaning.
2. RANGE OF PUNISHMENT / SENTENCING RANGE: In criminal law, the statutory or guideline-prescribed span of permissible penalties for a given offense — the minimum and maximum sentence a court may impose.
3. OPEN RANGE: A doctrine in property and livestock law recognizing a landowner's limited duty to fence out livestock, with liability consequences for animals wandering onto roads or neighboring land. Distinct from the survey meaning entirely.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A line or series of mountains or buildings; a cooking stove; an area for practicing shooting at targets; the distance from a sensor or person to an object; the maximum distance a vehicle or weapon can travel or reach; selection or array.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To set in a row or in ranks; to place in a regular line; to dispose in proper order; to rank.
The common meaning of range emphasizes distance, scope, or span — a stove's heating area, a mountain chain, a rifle's effective reach. The primary legal meaning is far narrower and more technical: a numbered column of land in a federal survey grid. A researcher encountering "range" in historical deeds, patents, or land grants should not read it as a vague spatial descriptor but as a precise coordinate identifier in a formal mapping system.
Common Confusion
Range is sometimes conflated with township in casual descriptions of the public land survey system. These are coordinate axes, not synonyms: township identifies a row running east-west, while range identifies a column running north-south. Both are needed to locate a township unit on the survey grid. Misreading one for the other in historical land records will place a parcel in the wrong location entirely.
The open range doctrine should not be confused with the survey term. In livestock and property law, open range refers to a legal regime, not a geographic column on a map.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with federal land patents, homestead claims, pre-emption filings, or any public land disposal records from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will encounter range constantly. It is the skeleton of land description in roughly thirty states — primarily those west of the original thirteen colonies — where the General Land Office conducted rectangular surveys before settlement.
Several research traps deserve attention:
First, range numbering resets at each principal meridian, and there are dozens of principal meridians across the United States. "Range 6 West" in Kansas and "Range 6 West" in Oregon describe entirely different columns of land. The principal meridian must always be identified to anchor the description.
Second, older documents and some state statutes abbreviate range as "R." or "Rge." Researchers skimming historical deeds may overlook the designation if they are not watching for shorthand.
Third, the survey system was applied unevenly in time. States admitted early (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) were surveyed under earlier, less standardized methods before the 1785 Land Ordinance's grid was fully refined. Survey irregularities, correction lines, and offset townships in these early-surveyed states mean that range columns are not always perfectly uniform in width.
Fourth, in the Law Mind corpus, range in land law context will appear in connection with homestead entries, mining claims, timber culture claims, and federal patent records. Researchers cross-referencing these records should also consult township plats and GLO survey field notes, which are separate documentary sources that provide the underlying geographic data.
In criminal and sentencing law, the phrase sentencing range appears throughout modern statutory and guideline materials. Researchers moving between historical and modern sources should be alert to the shift: early sources almost never use range in a sentencing context, while modern criminal law sources use it constantly.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries treat range exclusively in its public land survey meaning, which reflects the term's dominant legal significance at the time of their compilation. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) define range as a division of a state designating a row or tier of townships as they appear on the map. Bouvier's adds useful detail, noting that range appears in federal patents to individuals for public land as a locating descriptor — grounding the term firmly in the documentary record of land disposition rather than abstract geography.
None of the historical sources address the criminal law usage (sentencing range) or the livestock law usage (open range doctrine), both of which developed their current prominence after the major dictionary editions were compiled or were treated as separate entries. Researchers relying solely on these historical dictionaries for a full picture of range in law will get the land survey meaning accurately but miss the term's significant modern footprint in criminal procedure and agricultural property law.
Jurisdictional Note
The public land survey meaning of range applies only in states surveyed under the federal rectangular system — primarily the public land states of the Midwest, South, and West. The original thirteen colonies and states carved from them (plus Texas, which retained its own land system) were not surveyed under this system and do not use range in land descriptions. Open range doctrine varies significantly by state statute; some western states have codified it, while others have abolished or modified it by fencing laws.