Earthscapes:
The Red River Valley
Section, Township, and Range
By: Don McCollor
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Traveling the roads and byways of the Red River Valley in high summer
is a pleasant experience. There are endless variations on green of fields
and shelter belts under a bowl of sky. No forests or mountains to block
the view. And what is a mere mountain compared to the majesty of a prairie
thunderstorm rearing ten miles into the sky.
It is difficult, if not impossible to get lost. Confused for a time,
certainly, but not lost. The secondary roads are laid out in a mile-square
grid--north and south, east and west. From the air, the pattern of roads
and fields resembling a gigantic checkerboard. Travel offers a simple choice
of right, left, or straight ahead at each intersection, barring some detours
and backtracking where roads should be but are not built. No matter, traveling
a mile right or left usually brings one to a parallel road to replace the
missing one. And the roads are straight, with few natural obstacles like
lakes and hills to avoid. It is all the more disconcerting therefore, to
traverse a north-south road and find it dead-end, jog a hundred feet or
so right or left and continue on. This is on flat level land with nary a
hill or water body in sight to explain the two not meeting.
Both the rectilinear grid work of roads and fields and the occasional
jog in the north-south roads are a result of the United States Government
Land Surveys. The Surveys establishing the mile-square system oriented north-south
and east-west began with an act of Congress in 1796 with periodic later
updates. As the frontier moved westward, the Land Surveys were an important,
essential part of settlement. Western Minnesota and eastern North Dakotas
were being surveyed in 1879. After struggling over hills and through swamps
and brush, dragging surveying chains through the poison
ivy, the flat treeless Valley must have seemed like paradise to the early
surveyors.
Surveying has a beautiful precision all its own. It also allows the inept
surveyor to preserve any mistakes for posterity on a grand scale, or for
the unscrupulous to adjust property boundaries through judiciously selective
errors. The Government Survey method itself had a fundamental problem associated
with it. The earth is round, while the Survey deals with "flat"
square areas. The effect is like trying to gift-wrap a basketball. Flat
surfaces just do not fits a globe, and certain accommodations are necessary.
This was recognized back in 1796, but like many other recognized government
problems, solving it was deferred.
The Government Survey method begins with determining an "initial
point" and a north-south principal meridian and east-west baseline
through it. This is done very accurately using celestial positioning using
the sun and the north star akin to navigation at sea.
Minnesota is surveyed from the 4th and 5th principal meridian and the Dakotas
from the 5th and 6th. Other north-south "guide meridians" and
east-west "standard parallels" are determined at 24 mile intervals
to form a gridwork. Since the north-south lines are following lines of longitude
that converge at the north pole, the top of each grid
is somewhat less than 24 miles. At each guide meridian, new standard parallels
are determined so the base of each grid is always 24 miles wide. This causes
the "offsets" in the north-south roads at 24 mile intervals. Further
south, where the effect of convergence of lines of longitude is not as severe,
the parallels and guide meridians are at 30-mile intervals. The 24-mile
grids are subdivided into 16 townships, each six miles square. Note that
the townships are six miles wide only at the southern edge of the grid,
and get progressively narrower toward the northern boundary. The township
is further subdivided into 36 sections, each one mile square. The numbering
of section in a township begins with "1" in the northeast corner
and proceeds as shown in the Figure. The section lines are at one mile intervals
parallel to the southern and eastern borders of the township. All the error
due to the converging north-south lines is taken out of the sections at
the western township edge. Buying a section of land in the northwest most
part of one of the 24-mile grids means being short-changed the most on land
area. A section of land comprise 640 acres and may be divided into half
sections, quarter-sections ( a quarter-160 acres), an eight-section (a eighty-eighty
acres) or a sixteenth-section (a forty-40 acres). As need further subdividing
can be down to house-lot size or smaller. In the Valley, the normal field
unit is a section, , half section or quarter section.
One-sixty-forth of a section (10 acres) is about right for parking the farm
machinery.
A Treatise on the Methods of Government Surveying, Clevenger, Shobal
V., Van Nostrand, New York, 1883, reprinted by Carben Surveying Reprints,
Hopkins, MN, 1978, p. 65.
The Principles and Practice of Surveying, Volume 1. Elementary Surveying,
Breed, Charles B. and Hosmer, George L., John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1952.
Forty Years in North Dakota, Arnold, Henry Vernon, Arnold, Larimore, ND
1921.
A chain is precisely that, a chain. A Surveyor's or Gunter's chain was
sixty-six feet (20.12 meters) long and comprised of one hundred links. each
7.92 inches (20.1 cm) long. Exactly eighty chains (i.e. the length of eighty
chains) equaled a mile.
A Treatise on the Methods of Government Surveying, Clevenger, Shobal
V., Van Nostrand, New York, 1883, reprinted by Carben Surveying Reprints,
Hopkins, MN, 1978, p. 65.
The early surveyor were a tough breed. In the 1870's, a Tiedeman was
surveying part of the route for the Canadian Pacific Railway when one of
the surveying party became lost. After much persuasion, he grudging agreed
to waste time searching for the wretch. When the lost surveyor was found
after two days nearly crazed with hunger and fear, Tiedeman's first words
were "you shall have four more day's work for losing those two days."
The Impossible Railway, Burton, Pierre, Knopf, New York, 1972, p 100.
The north pole is an imaginary construct with interesting geographical
properties. When the submarine SSN Nautilus reached the pole in 1958, the
log position read "latitude 90 degrees N, longitude indefinite".
Since all longitude lines meet at the pole, longitude is anything from 0
to 360 degrees. South was any direction one pointed, and with a twelve-hour
time zone difference between bow and stern. With all directions being south,
the inertial navigation system gives up indicating direction and goes into
a sulk until the ship moves a few hundred yards from the pole proper.
Nautilus 90 degrees North, Anderson, William R., World Publishing Company,
Cleveland, 1959.
The North Star or Polaris is almost but not quite aligned with true north.
It is approximately one degree away from the spot where true north, would
be, and as the earth rotates appears to move in a tiny circle round the
sky. The difference is unimportant, except for accurate navigation. The
angle of the north star above the horizon (accounting for the one-degree
correction) is also the latitude of the observer.
The Wilderness Route Finder, Rutstrum, Calvin, MacMillan Publishing,
NY, 1967.
Then there is Section 37. A township, as explained, contains 36 sections--never
more. The mythical Section 37 is a useful place to explain one's absence
or activities when a bare minimum of factual detail is desirable. For example,
when explaining where the hired men have been when out of sight (and not
at work)all day: "they've been over plowing on Section 37...".
A relative of the author homesteaded in Dakota in the early days and
later moved back to Minnesota after several years of drought. Apparently
disillusioned and disgusted with the climate and land related that he had
sold the homestead to a naive immigrant just off the boat. "He thought
he was getting a quarter [160 acres] but he actually got a half section
[twice as much land-320 acres] but doesn't know it yet.
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