A little know secret is that Free Township Range data for each State can be had via the delorme Xmap site. Simply jump to http://www.delorme.com/xmap/ and scroll down to the supplementary data section. NGS Benchmarks are also available for purchase for a very small fee.
The PLSS layer includes the following attributes for each section polygon:
- TWP – Township number
- TWP_DIR – Township direction, usually N (north) or S (south) of the survey baseline
- RNG – Range number
- RNG_DIR – Range direction, usually E (east) or W (west) of the principal meridian
- SEC – Section number