How do I find my property corners?
Start with the paper, not the woods. Pull the recorded deed and any plat from the county's land records; the deed's calls and a survey plat's monument descriptions are where corner markers, such as an iron pin, a stone or a tree, are named. A marker you find is evidence of the line, not proof of it, and reestablishing a boundary is a land surveyor's work under Virginia law.
Every corner you are hunting starts as a written call
Before a corner is a pin in the ground, it is a sentence on a recorded page. A deed runs its description from corner to corner, and a surveyor's plat names what marks each one. Under Virginia's land boundary survey regulation, the plat must describe each monument the surveyor found and each monument the surveyor set. That description is what you are looking for, and it is the first step, before anyone walks the line.
The same regulation says a land boundary survey is monumented with objects of permanent material at all corners and changes of direction. It also names exceptions: meanders, such as meanders of streams, tidelands, lakes, swamps and prescriptive rights-of-way. Where it is not physically feasible to set the actual corner, appropriate reference monuments are set and shown on the plat instead. So a plat can tell you, before you go out, that a line follows a creek and has no pin along the water, or that the mark you want is a reference monument set near the corner rather than on it.
Check the title of the plat too. A plat compiled from deeds, older plats or someone else's survey must say it is not a current land boundary survey. It may repeat old corner descriptions without anyone having looked for them recently. What separates the two kinds of plat is covered in the entry on a boundary survey.
Pull the recorded deed and plat before you go outside
A deed is recorded in the county or city where the land lies. In Carroll County the land records are kept by the Circuit Court Clerk's Office, and the clerk's page says anyone can search the county's Land Record Index back to 1842 without paying a monthly fee.
Search the index
Find your deed in the index. The free index service tells you what is recorded; the Clerk's Office notes that you will not be able to view document images with that service.
Follow the description back
Read the description in your deed. Where it refers to an earlier deed or a recorded plat, find that instrument too, because the corner descriptions may sit there rather than in the most recent deed.
Get the plat itself
The plat is where monuments are drawn and described. Ask the Clerk's Office how to get a copy of any instrument you cannot view through the index.
Note every corner call
Write down, corner by corner, what the paper says marks it and which corners the paper says nothing about. That list is what you carry outside.
Questions about Carroll County's land records go to the Circuit Court Clerk's Office at 605-1 Pine Street, A230, Hillsville, 276-730-3070. The same office is where a deed is recorded, and the process is set out in recording a deed in Carroll County.
A tax map or parcel number will find the parcel on a county map, and it is useful for that. It does not draw a corner or a line. How parcel numbers and plats relate in the record is set out in plats and GPINs.
Iron pins, stones, marked trees and fence corners
A metes and bounds description can name many different things as a corner. VDOT's survey manual, telling its own crews what to locate, lists found property corners as monuments, stones, iron pins, trees, fence corners and the like. Those are the kinds of things your corner calls are likely to name.
Lots created under a subdivision ordinance can come with a more specific standard. Virginia requires every subdivision ordinance to provide for monuments of specific types establishing street and property lines. Carroll County's posted 2014 subdivision ordinance says the corners in a subdivision made under it are marked with iron not less than one-half inch in diameter and 24 inches long, driven flush with the finished grade, and that the final plat shows the locations of monuments and property markers.
Two practical cautions follow from the paper, not from any technique. A pin driven flush with the grade is not standing up to be seen. And a corner call can send you to a spot on a neighbor's side of the line; whether you may go onto adjoining land to look for one is a question for an attorney before it is a walk in the woods.
A pin in the ground is evidence of the line, not the line
Finding an iron pin tells you that someone set an iron pin there. Whether it is the corner your deed calls for is a separate question. The Code of Virginia includes establishing or reestablishing land boundaries in the practice of land surveying, and the survey regulation requires the surveyor to carefully compare evidence from all known sources, including evidence found in the field, to aid in establishing the correct boundaries. The pin is one piece of that evidence.
A marker that sits where the paper says it should is encouraging. A marker that does not is a reason to call a land surveyor, and how the written call and the evidence on the ground are weighed when a new survey and the deed end up disagreeing is covered in what to do when the survey and the deed disagree.
A fence corner is worth particular attention. It may mark the line, or it may mark where someone has been using the ground for a long time, which is a different matter; how long use and occupation can turn into title is set out in adverse possession, the basics.
Leave every boundary marker exactly where you found it
Once you find something, the temptation is to straighten it, pull it to look at it, or move it to where you think it belongs. Virginia treats a boundary marker as more than a piece of metal. Under Va. Code 18.2-137, unlawfully destroying, defacing, damaging or removing, without intent to steal, a memorial designating the boundaries of a tract of land, or a tree marked for that purpose, is a Class 3 misdemeanor.
The penalty climbs when the person is not the owner and causes the injury intentionally: a Class 1 misdemeanor if the value of or damage to the property, memorial or monument is less than $1,000 and a Class 6 felony at $1,000 or more. Whether any particular act crosses one of those lines is a question for an attorney. The practical rule is simpler: photograph it, note it, and leave it.
Monuments that are missing, disturbed or never set are exactly what a surveyor is there to deal with. How a surveyor searches the record, weighs what is found and sets new monuments is laid out in how land surveys work.
Property corners you cannot find on the ground?
Send the county and the tax map number or deed reference, and Lowell will pull what is recorded and tell you plainly when the next step belongs to a surveyor. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions this raises
Does a plat say whether the surveyor found a corner marker or set a new one?
On a land boundary survey, yes. Virginia's regulation requires the plat to describe each monument found and each monument set by the professional. So a plat can tell you which corners had an existing marker when that survey was made and which ones the surveyor marked. Whether a marker you see today is that same monument is a question for a land surveyor.
What kind of corner marker should a Carroll County subdivision lot have?
Carroll County's posted April 14, 2014 subdivision ordinance says corners are marked with iron not less than one-half inch in diameter and 24 inches long, driven flush with the finished grade, and the final plat shows the locations of monuments and property markers. That is the standard for subdivisions made under that ordinance, not a description of older tracts. Confirm the current rule with Carroll County Land Use and Planning.
Does the county GIS map show where my corners are?
No. A county GIS layer or tax map, and the parcel number that goes with it, helps you find the parcel. It is a locator, not a survey, and it does not reestablish a corner or a line. The corners on the ground are found and set by a land surveyor working from the recorded deed and plat.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- Circuit Court Clerk: Land Records (Land Record Index back to 1842) Carroll County, Virginia
- Circuit Court Clerk's Office, 605-1 Pine Street, A230, Hillsville Carroll County, Virginia
- Va. Code 55.1-407: recording deeds in the county or city where the property lies Virginia General Assembly
- 18VAC10-20-370: minimum standards and procedures for land boundary surveying practice Virginia Administrative Code
- Va. Code 54.1-400: definitions, including the practice of land surveying Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code 15.2-2241: mandatory provisions of a subdivision ordinance (monuments) Virginia General Assembly
- Subdivision Ordinance, posted April 14, 2014 (corner markers and monuments) Carroll County, Virginia
- VDOT Survey Manual, Chapter 4 (found property corners and boundary retracement) Virginia Department of Transportation
- Va. Code 18.2-137: injuring or removing boundary markers Virginia General Assembly