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 Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Public Land Survey System, 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 techni ...

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

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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 (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 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

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History

Prior to standardization, some of the Ohio Lands (the United States Military District, the Firelands and the Connecticut Western Reserve) 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 of 1862, one quarter-section of land was the amount allocated to each settler. Stemming from that are the idiomatic expressions, "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 ref ...

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

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. 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 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