History and systems of surveying in Ohio

Surveying in Ohio is said to be more complicated than surveying in any other area of ​​the United States. The history of surveying in the Ohio area dates back relatively early in American surveying history, and partly because of this, there are several surveying systems in use throughout the state. In Ohio, surveyors must work among more than a dozen different surveying systems, depending on the area of ​​the state; In many areas, two or more systems have previously been used to measure the same land area.

Exploration of what is now Ohio began relatively early, by the French in 1669 and 1670. This area was disputed between the French and English until the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763, assigning the entire area to England. At this point, many large tracts in the area were allocated to pay off the debts of the Penn family, the Connecticut Colony, the Virginia Settlement, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and others. The English knew little of these lands due to their remoteness; As a result, there was a lot of guesswork involved in these transactions. Because of this, many of the grants overlapped, causing legal problems almost from the start.

With the end of the Revolutionary War, the various colonies ceded certain areas to the newly formed government, and this land would be sold to pay off war debts. The new government needed a method to inventory and sell this land. Because Ohio was then on the edge of the western frontier, it was the testing ground for many different polls, including nine major polling systems and 46 smaller ones. Major surveys in Ohio include the Ohio River Survey (the first PLSS survey), the Virginia Military Survey, the Connecticut Western Reserve Survey, the Miami Inter-Rivers Survey, the Miami River Survey, the Military Survey of the United States, the South and East of the Prime Meridian Survey, the North and East of the Prime Prime Meridian Survey, and the Michigan Survey.

In surveying history, Ohio is perhaps best known as the birthplace of the Public Land Surveying System, which is still in use today. This system divided public lands into six-mile-by-six-mile townships. These would be divided into sections, each one square mile and 640 acres. The first area surveyed under the Public Lands Survey System was in eastern Ohio, with work beginning in 1785 with the Starting Point, or the intersection of the western boundary of Pennsylvania and the north bank of the Ohio River.

The Virginia Military Survey, begun in 1787, was a survey of measures and boundaries with spans ranging from 100 to 15,000 acres; this land was awarded to Revolutionary War veterans based on rank. The shapes of the land were not necessarily rectangular, but rather drawn by the veteran himself to encompass the best land available. You can find more than 16,000 different parcels of land measured by the Virginia Military Survey in 23 countries throughout the state, and it is the only measurement system in Ohio that is not based on rectangular parcels.

Many other surveys were conducted to sell land in the Ohio area, both before and after Ohio became a state in 1803. As the area known as Ohio developed, many other survey systems were used to divide the ground over and over again. Other types of surveys included survey townships of three, four, or six square miles. To measure land in Ohio, one must be familiar with each of these surveys.