American boundaries : the nation, the states, the rectangular survey
For anyone who has looked at a map of the United States and wondered how Texas and Oklahoma got their panhandles, or flown over the American heartland and marveled at the vast grid spreading out in all directions below, this book will yield a welcome treasure trove of insight. The first book to chart the country's growth using the boundary as a political and cultural focus, the author's narrative begins by explaining how the original thirteen colonies organized their borders and decided that unsettled lands should be held in trust for the common benefit of the people. He goes on to show, with the help of photographs, diagrams, and hundreds of maps, how the notion evolved that unsettled land should be divided into rectangles and sold to individual farmers, and how this rectangular survey spread outward from its origins in Ohio, with surveyors drawing straight lines across the face of the continent. Mapping how each state came to have its current shape, and how the nation itself formed within its present borders, this book provides historians, geographers, and general readers alike with the story behind those fifty distinctive jigsaw puzzle pieces that together form the United States
History
xiv, 452 pages : illustrations, maps ; 29 cm
9780226355917, 0226355918
163625212
Introduction: Boundaries in the United States as the manifest division of the nation's lands
The colonies stake claims to land in the West
The idea of a national domain emerges
The national domain expands
A method of forming new states emerges
The evolution of the territories and states
Inventing a rectangular survey in the Ordinance of 1785
Putting a rectangular survey on the ground in Ohio
The rectangular survey evolves into its final form
The survey is extended across the public domain
The spread of the survey across Montana
Epilogue: Other ways to apportion a public domain