Blog · September 30, 2026
What Is a Gore?
A gore is a thin, often triangular strip of land left between two surveys or two descriptions that were supposed to meet and did not. It is a gap with a shape. It is not a bonus you add to the nearest yard, and it is not something a parcel viewer meant to depict.
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How a gore is born
Two surveyors, or one surveyor on two days, run lines that should be the same line and leave a wedge between them. A deed excepts a parcel and the exception does not quite touch the boundary it was meant to reach. A road taking leaves a splinter between the taking line and the old fence. The splinter has a name in land practice: a gore, sometimes a strip and gore when the leftover is a long thin piece. Title to a gore does not float to the neighbor with the louder mower. It stays with whoever the deeds still cover, which may be the original grantor, an heir, or a deed that conveyed all the remainder including strips the grantor did not know were there. Some deeds include a strip-and-gore clause for exactly this leftover. If yours does, read it. If it does not, do not pretend it does.
How you see one on paper
Plot both descriptions from the record, not from the tax map, and a gore shows up as a polygon neither deed cleanly covers, or as an overlap if the problem is the opposite. A gore is the gap case. An overlap is the double-coverage case. They need opposite remedies and the same discipline: do not fix them with a fence. The assessor may have assigned the sliver to somebody’s parcel so the roll has no hole, or may have left a tiny polygon with no account. That assignment is taxation. It is not a quiet-title decree. County GIS will happily color a gore as part of a larger parcel because a digitizer closed a shape. The color is not title.
What to do when you suspect one
Get both deeds, the parent deed, and any strip-and-gore or remainder language. Sketch the calls. If the sliver is more than a line weight on the drawing, stop and take it to a surveyor and, for the ownership, to a title attorney. Do not occupy the strip, pave it, or quitclaim it away in a driveway conversation. A phone GPS cannot define a gore a few feet wide, because the phone’s scatter can be wider than the gore. A measuring wheel along the fence measures the fence. The gore is a record geometry until someone competent ties it to monuments. Platbookmapper will not outline it. The site only links to the county assessment viewer.
What to do next
- Plot both neighboring descriptions from the deeds.
- Separate a gap, which may be a gore, from an overlap.
- Read any strip-and-gore clause in the parent deed.
- Do not possess or fence a sliver because the tax map colored it.
The mix-up to avoid
Calling every mismatch between a fence and a GIS line a gore. Most of those mismatches are map generalization or occupation. A gore is a gap between descriptions.
Questions people ask
Is a gore the same as a hiatus?
They are cousins. Hiatus is often used for a gap between original government surveys. Gore is the everyday word for a leftover strip or wedge, including between private deeds. The title work is similar. The documents you pull are the ones that created the gap.
Can a later deed that says all my land in the county pick up a gore?
Sometimes broad remainder language is enough, and sometimes it is not, depending on the words and the law of that state. The clause has to be read. A guess that all my land must have included it is not a reading.
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.