dataplssunited-states
I have a number of lat/long coordinates that I need to identify township, range, and section for. I am using QGIS to do it.
The coordinates are in different states and I was able to most states' shapefiles here: http://www.geocommunicator.gov/GeoComm/lsis_home/home/, but I can't find Texas and New York data.
Does anyone have a good data source?
The primary industry that uses this is the real estate industry, and planning and government. The TRS system is the basis for the legal descriptions that describe the locations of land parcels in most of the United States.
There are a number of ways that the bounds of a land parcel may be described, but at some point, whether at the parcel level, or subdivision level, it is tied back into the TRS system. The caveat to this is that it mostly applies to land west of the Mississippi aside from Texas, the states bordering the Great Lakes, and the southern states aside from Georgia.
There are likely other uses, but I think this is the primary, and most critical in the context of property ownership rights in the US.
The national map is one source.
BLM Geocommunicator is another
There is a history of the plss system here
Depending on your location you will probably need the blm source data and the alt source data.
Best Answer
Like several other states, Texas and New York are not part of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), that's why data for those states don't appear at the page you linked to. Neither state has townships, ranges, or sections of the type you need, those types of areas are found inside the boundaries of the PLSS. New York has townships, but those are not the same thing as a Township in PLSS terms. You can read more here about why the PLSS was created and why those states are not part of it.
You may want to use either Counties or County Subdivisions instead, those are available in NY and TX and their size is comparable to the PLSS units you're looking for. You can get those layers from the US Census.