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PHG Boundary

Uh OH, SoMeThInG BrOkE

Writing a legal description with Python

I created a versatile python script that automates the process of generating a proper legal description for an area of land. While this is not normally a complicated task, when you are trying to describe the exact border of a fire district in words it can get a bit lengthy, and trying to do it by hand would take a huge amount of time and resources. This script eliminates about 90 percent of that cost.

View the code on GitHub

About the project

This was my most recent personal project while at PHG. Overtime as the area has changed, it became neccessary to redraw the border of the PHG fire district, this change included adding, removing, and adjusting the border to properly represent who and what is considered "protected" by the Fire Department.

Do you know how to describe an area of land in proper legal terms? It's actually pretty simple.

Let's say you want to describe the border of a square property. You start at a reference point, say, the southwest corner of a census block, then you proceed north for 500 feet, then east for 1000 feet, then south for 500 feet, then west 500 feet back to the starting point. Makes sense right? And in legal terms it looks like this:

Beginning at the southwest corner of the 3025 Census Block; Thence proceeding North 500 a distance of 500 feet; Thence West a distance of 1000 feet; Thence south a distance of 500 feet, Thence East to the point of beginning.

That is pretty easy and straightforward. But what happens when your border is not perfectly square? Or has a large number of segments? This proccess can become much more ticky very quickly. This project was created to automate the process of describing a land border in legal terms. In fact it was created to describe the legal boundary of a fire district that has over 1000 lines that needed to be described, The final document being over 20 pages long. Imagine doing that by hand.

Here is a sample of the official legal description for PHG Fire District

Imagine writing this by hand, even with copy/paste. The final document is over 50 pages long!

Thence North 88°25'52" West a distance of 5217.13 feet; Thence South 2°5'55" West a distance of 689.45 feet; Thence North 89°32'12" East a distance of 1256.24 feet; Thence South 1°39'7" West a distance of 330.0 feet; Thence North 88°22'56" West a distance of 1005.76 feet; Thence North 1°38'31" East a distance of 1330.39 feet; Thence South 87°53'28" East a distance of 254.8 feet; Thence North 1°38'30" East a distance of 229.13 feet; Thence North 1°38'30" East a distance of 130.87 feet; Thence South 87°49'38" East a distance of 309.11 feet; Thence North 1°37'17" East a distance of 365.36 feet; Thence North 28°56'60" East a distance of 226.55 feet; Thence North 85°12'38" West a distance of 769.49 feet; Thence North 85°12'38" West a distance of 208.26 feet; Thence North 1°43'25" East a distance of 418.49 feet; Thence North 87°22'36" West a distance of 1669.8 feet; Thence South 1°50'27" West a distance of 665.84 feet; Thence South 39°59'31" West a distance of 111.98 feet; Thence South 53°34'51" West a distance of 70.05 feet; Thence North 87°33'60" West a distance of 4639.06 feet; Thence South 88°42'39" West a distance of 1760.36 feet; Thence North 57°25'7" West a distance of 353.89 feet; Thence South 79°34'59" West a distance of 280.2 feet; Thence North 89°46'9" West a distance of 4896.22 feet; Thence North 26°23'34" East a distance of 243.42 feet; Thence North 21°38'47" East a distance of 212.82 feet; Thence North 10°18'17" East a distance of 23.51 feet; Thence North 10°18'17" East a distance of 59.54 feet; Thence Northerly a distance of 81.7 feet; Thence North 2°56'8" West a distance of 290.06 feet; Thence North 6°6'57" West a distance of 209.16 feet; Thence North 13°23'32" West a distance of 10.45 feet; Thence North 13°23'32" West a distance of 149.89 feet; Thence North 26°33'54" West a distance of 49.83 feet; Thence North 32°0'21" West a distance of 29.91 feet; Thence North 32°0'19" West a distance of 110.23 feet; Thence North 21°2'15" West a distance of 61.98 feet; Thence North 21°2'15" West a distance of 41.47 feet; Thence North 35°32'18" West a distance of 20.91 feet; Thence North 35°32'15" West a distance of 42.98 feet; Thence North 45°0'2" West a distance of 31.03 feet; Thence North 45°0'0" West a distance of 63.51 feet; Thence North 46°58'29" West a distance of 152.4 feet; Thence South 85°34'19" West a distance of 9.03 feet; Thence South 85°34'18" West a distance of 22.62 feet; Thence South 85°34'18" West a distance of 63.93 feet; Thence South 85°34'18" West a distance of 164.51 feet; Thence South 85°34'18" West a distance of 154.78 feet;