Western Reserve Including the Fire Lands 1826

A survey township, sometimes called a Congressional township or just township, as used by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Public Land Survey System The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 178 ...

, is a nominally-square area of land that is nominally six U.S.

survey mile Survey may refer to: Statistics and human research * Statistical survey, a method for collecting quantitative information about items in a population * Survey (human research), including opinion polls Spatial measurement * Surveying, the techniq ...

s (about 9.66 km) on a side. Each 36-square-mile (about 93.2 km²) township is divided into 36

sections Section, Sectioning or Sectioned may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea * Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents ** Section sig ...

of one square mile (640

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s, roughly 2.6 km²) each. The sections can be further subdivided for sale. The townships are referenced by a numbering system that locates the township in relation to a

principal meridian A principal meridian is a meridian used for survey control in a large region. Canada The Dominion Land Survey of Western Canada took its origin at the First (or Principal) Meridian, located at 97°27′28.41″ west of Greenwich, just west of Wi ...

(north-south) and a base line (east-west). For example, Township 2 North, Range 4 East is the 4th township east of the principal meridian and the 2nd township north of the base line. Township (exterior) lines were originally surveyed and platted by the US

General Land Office The General Land Office (GLO) was an independent agency of the United States government responsible for public domain lands in the United States. It was created in 1812 to take over functions previously conducted by the United States Department ...

using contracted private survey crews. Later survey crews subdivided the townships into section (interior) lines. Virtually all lands covered by this system were sold according to those boundaries and are marked on the

U.S. Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and ...

topographic map In modern mapping, a topographic map or topographic sheet is a type of map characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief features, usually using contour lines (connecting points of equal elevation), but histori ...

History

Prior to standardization, some of the

Ohio Lands The Ohio Lands were the several grants, tracts, districts and cessions which make up what is now the U.S. state of Ohio. The Ohio Country was one of the first settled parts of the Midwest, and indeed one of the first settled parts of the United St ...

(the

United States Military District The United States Military District was a land tract in central Ohio that was established by the Congress to compensate veterans of the American Revolutionary War for their service. The tract contains in Noble, Guernsey, Tuscarawas, Muskingu ...

, the

Firelands The Firelands, or Sufferers' Lands, tract was located at the western end of the Connecticut Western Reserve in what is now the U.S. state of Ohio. It was legislatively established in 1792, as the "Sufferers' Lands", and later became named "Fire Land ...

and the

Connecticut Western Reserve The Connecticut Western Reserve was a portion of land claimed by the Colony of Connecticut and later by the state of Connecticut in what is now mostly the northeastern region of Ohio. The Reserve had been granted to the Colony under the terms ...

) were surveyed into townships of on each side. These are often known as Congressional Townships. Sections are divided into quarter-sections of each and quarter-quarter sections of each. In the

Homestead Act The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than of public land, or nearly 10 percent of ...

of 1862, one quarter-section of land was the amount allocated to each settler. Stemming from that are the

idiomatic expression An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...

s, "the lower 40", the 40 acres on a settler's land that is lowest in elevation, in the direction towards which water drains toward a stream, and the "

back forty The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 ...

", the portion farthest from the settler's dwelling.

Survey township vs. civil township

Survey townships are distinct from

civil township A civil township is a widely used unit of local government in the United States that is subordinate to a county, most often in the northern and midwestern parts of the country. The term town is used in New England, New York, and Wisconsin to ...

s. A survey township is used to establish boundaries for land ownership, while a civil township is a form of

local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-lo ...

. In states with civil townships, the two types of townships often coincide. County lines, especially in western states, usually follow survey township lines, leading to the large number of rectangular counties in the Midwest, which are agglomerations of survey townships. In western Canada, the

Dominion Land Survey The Dominion Land Survey (DLS; french: links=no, arpentage des terres fédérales, ATF) is the method used to divide most of Western Canada into one-square-mile (2.6 km2) sections for agricultural and other purposes. It is based on the layout ...

adopted a similar format for survey townships, which do not form administrative units. These townships also have the area of 36 square miles (six miles by six miles).

History

Survey township vs. civil township

See also

References

Further reading