Section 82.01. Definitions.

  In this chapter, the following words and phrases have the designated meanings unless specifically noted:

(1)  “Department" means the department of transportation.

(2)  “Freeholder" means a person who owns a fee simple or life estate interest in land, a person who is a land contract vendee, or a person who has an interest in land arising under ch. 766 .

(3)  “Highway order" means an order laying out, altering, or discontinuing a highway or a part of a highway, that contains a legal description of what the order intends to accomplish and a scale map of the land affected by the order.

(4)  “Laid out" means any formal act or process by which a municipality determines the location of a highway.

(5)  “Legal description" means a complete description of land without internal references to any other document, and shall be described in one of the following ways:

(a) By metes and bounds commencing at a monument at the section or quarter section corner or at the end of a boundary line of a recorded private claim or federal reservation in which the annexed land is located and in one of the following ways:

1. By government lot.

2. By recorded private claim.

3. By quarter section, section, township, and range.

(b) If the land is located in a recorded and filed subdivision or in an area that is subject to a certified survey map, by reference as described in s. 236.28 or 236.34 (3) .

(c) If the land is depicted in a transportation project plat filed or recorded under s. 84.095 , by reference as described in s. 84.095 (7) (a) .

(6)  “Municipality" means a city, village, or town.

(7)  “Opened" means the completion of work on a highway that places the highway in a condition ready for public use.

(8)  “Recorded highway" means a highway for which the order laying out or altering the highway, or a certified copy of the order, has been recorded in the office of the register of deeds in the county in which the highway is situated or, for highways that were laid out or altered before January 1, 2005, in the office of the clerk of the town or the county in which the highway is situated.

(9)  “Town line highway" means a highway that runs on or across the boundary line between a town and another town, a village, or a city.

(10)  “Unrecorded highway" means a highway that is not a recorded highway.

(11)  “Worked" means action of the town in regularly maintaining a highway for public use, including hauling gravel, grading, clearing or plowing, and any other maintenance by or on behalf of the town on the road.