Blog · September 30, 2026
What Is a Centerline Strip Easement?
A centerline strip easement describes a line, then says the easement is a stated width on each side, or a full width centered on that line. The centerline is not the edge. Half the width on each side is the usual reading when the deed says centered.
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The call you have to finish
Pipeline deeds, ditch deeds, and many access easements describe the centerline with bearings and distances, then add being twenty feet wide, ten feet on each side of the centerline. The strip is the easement. The centerline is a drafting spine. If you fence the centerline, you have fenced the middle of the easement and left the edges in the wrong place. If the deed says twenty feet wide and does not say on each side, do not double it into forty. On each side means what it says. Wide, without the words on each side, usually means the whole width. This is the single most common arithmetic error in reading strip easements. Write the full width in the margin of your copy and hatch half of it on each side only when the deed says to.
Offsets, stations, and bends
When the centerline curves or bends, the strip bends with it. At a sharp angle the two sides have to be constructed carefully so the width stays perpendicular to the centerline. Sketching the sides as parallel polylines without mitering the corner can leave a gap or an overlap in your drawing. Surveyors offset the line. A kitchen sketch can be wrong at the bends and still look neat. Also watch a strip that follows a property line. Five feet on each side of a lot line puts half the easement on the neighbor. Five feet along the inside of the lot line puts the whole easement on one lot. The words parallel to and distant, adjoining, and centered are different. County GIS often draws easements as a single stroke with no width. The stroke is not the strip.
What not to do in the field
Do not pace ten feet off a pipeline marker and set a garage. Markers can be offset from the centerline for practical reasons, and the deed, not the marker post, states the width. A measuring wheel and a laser measure are not a survey. Staking an easement is surveying when it locates a recorded line on the ground. Platbookmapper will not draw the strip. It links to county GIS, which may show a pipeline centerline from a different source than your deed. Use the recorded description. If construction is planned near the strip, get a survey and the utility’s as-built requirements. Digging to find the pipe so you can measure from it is dangerous and is not a reading method.
What to do next
- Read the full width and whether it is on each side or overall.
- Offset perpendicular to the centerline, including around bends.
- Do not double a width that is already the full width.
- Keep pipeline marker posts from replacing the deed’s centerline.
The mix-up to avoid
Reading ten feet on each side as ten feet total, or the reverse. The strip is then twice as wide or half as wide as the grant, and a building designed to the wrong edge sits in the easement or wastes the yard.
Questions people ask
What if the deed gives only a centerline and a width, with no side preferred?
Centered is the ordinary construction when the deed says the easement is a width along that centerline and names no other offset. If it says along the north side of the line, it is not centered. The preposition controls.
Does the easement include the centerline only when the pipe is actually in the middle?
The deed location controls the easement. The pipe may sit off the paper centerline. That is an as-built fact a survey can show. It does not rewrite the recorded width by itself.
Find the county map
Start at Platbookmapper, search the county, and open the local GIS link. Write down the parcel number before you compare the screen to a paper plat.
Not a survey. County GIS and tax parcel maps are assessment and planning layers. They are not a substitute for a recorded plat, deed, or licensed survey.