Getting the state squared away

As we've noted numerous times elsewhere on this blog, we were raised in New England, mostly in and around Boston, Massachusetts. Among the many things for which Boston is famous or infamous are the street layouts that wander like cow paths. Sections, section line roads and 36 mile square townships were not part of our New England heritage. Minnesota, on the other hand, was surveyed in accord with the Land Ordinance Act of 1785.

The Public Land Survey System is coordinate-based, with all distances and bearings made from north-south running meridians and east-west base lines. The largest subdivision of land is the Public Land Survey Township (as opposed to political township), and measures six miles square. Each township is comprised of 36 sections, and each section has an area of one square mile (640 acres).

Over the weekend, we started reading Creating Minnesota,  which we originally picked up a year or two ago in Ely at Piragis. The approach and writing are enjoyable, but we were somewhat taken aback when we read, in the first chapter,

The Land ordinance of 1785 established a system for surveying and dividing the United States into six-mile squares, counted westward from a point on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. Subsequent land-law refinements divided those squares into thirty-six one-mile square sections, then each of those into four 640-acre quarter sections, ...

We're in complete agreement down to that last phrase. A one mile square section is 640 acres. We're not sure whether the concept got lost in editing or the arithmetic wasn't crossed checked by a copy-editor at the Minnesota Historical Society Press, the publisher, but we hope, and expect, to find no more such anomalies in the book. How this one slipped through is beyond us, or maybe the description and arithmetic are fine and we need a remedial reading course? In any case, we're looking forward to learning more about the history of our adopted state and region of the country.

With no segue whatsoever, we'll note that this morning's cool pre-sunrise temperature was very much to our liking, much more so than the flocks of mosquitos that descended on us as, later, we did some maintenance on our utility trailer at mid-day. We had, incorrectly and foolhardily, anticipated that today's breeze would protect us. We subsequently discovered that one of our mosquito-repellant shirts needs a repellant refresh since the mosquitos seem to lick the material before trying to puncture it and me to get their drop of blood. Winter and road repair; polar vortex and legions of bugs. Our Minnesota really needs more than two seasons.

THE SURVEYOR

"Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set." 
---Proverbs 22:28

He thrives on patterns,
    his marks and monuments
    transform a wilderness
    and by his carefully tagged
    and numbered squares,
    neat roads, correction lines
    and small cadastral lots
    he clothes in certainty,
    in geometrical designs,
    man's ancient rights.

He scans the skies,
    reading some far-off star
    by which he plots
    meridians and makes his maps,
    stitching a new-found world
    into a patchwork quilt,
    a net of metes and bounds,
    so lands may know their own
    and live in peace.

                                        -- DON W. THOMSON

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