Blog · September 30, 2026
What Is a Survey Hiatus?
A hiatus is a gap between two original surveys that do not quite meet, leaving an unconveyed or disputed strip between their record lines. It is a survey geometry problem from the creating surveys. It is not the ordinary difference between a fence and a tax map.
Platbookmapper is an Amazon Associate. If you buy through an Amazon link on this page, we earn a commission. The link is a product, not the county map.
A gap between parent surveys
Large original surveys, township lines, donation claims, and private patents sometimes fail to adjoin. One survey’s east line and the next survey’s west line, each monumented, can stand apart and leave a strip between them that neither patent clearly conveyed. That strip is a hiatus. The word is also used more loosely for any gap, but the useful meaning is this: two creating surveys, a space between their lines, and a title question about who, if anyone, received the space. You do not close a hiatus by averaging the two lines. Averaging invents a third line nobody surveyed and gives each owner land the grant may not have passed.
How it differs from excess, deficiency, and a gore
Excess and deficiency are the long or short measurements inside a survey system that had a rule for where leftovers go. A hiatus is a failure of two surveys to meet. A gore can be the private-deed version of a thin leftover, including wedges cut by later descriptions. The paperwork differs. For a hiatus between government surveys, the plats, the field notes, and the patents are the core. For a gore between two farm deeds, the deeds and the parent conveyance are the core. County GIS may fill the picture so the screen has no blank, because assessment maps are continuous by design. A continuous color ramp is not a finding that the patents met. Platbookmapper shows you the local viewer and does not analyze original surveys.
The scale of the evidence
Hiatus questions are decided from monuments of the two original surveys, not from a phone track along a deer trail. If the monuments are lost, restoration rules for those surveys apply, and they are a surveyor’s work. A landowner who fences the middle of a suspected hiatus can create an occupation story that makes the title worse. Leave the ground alone. Collect the two plats and the two patents or parent deeds, and look for any later conveyance that expressly picked up the strip. If none exists, the next step is professional, not a weekend with a laser measure. A laser measure is not a survey, and it cannot tell you which patent was senior.
What to do next
- Identify the two original surveys that were supposed to adjoin.
- Compare their plats and monuments, not the tax polygons.
- Do not average the two lines to manufacture a boundary.
- Look for a later deed that expressly conveyed the strip before you assume it passed.
The mix-up to avoid
Labeling every GIS sliver a hiatus. Assessment maps have slivers from digitizing. A hiatus is a gap between the creating surveys’ record lines.
Questions people ask
Does a hiatus belong to the state?
Only if the title never left the public and no later grant covered it. Many apparent gaps were conveyed by a broad patent, a remainder deed, or a later resurvey. Ownership is a document answer, not a default to the government or to the louder neighbor.
Can a resurvey erase a hiatus?
A resurvey can locate the original lines and sometimes show they actually meet. It can also document a true gap. It does not, by itself, convey the gap to anyone. Conveying is a deed or a patent’s job.
Find the county map
Search the county on the Platbookmapper home page. The directory links to the official parcel viewer. It does not draw the lots, and the line on the screen is an assessment map, not a survey.
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.