In a message dated 7/27/99 9:08:44 PM, Ksknfla@aol.com writes: >Townships are the north and south locators and Ranges are the east and >west locator. So T24N can be located on any map that has longitude and latitude >grid lines. WHOOPS!! Not quite true. The Township and Range system was a system that was invented in this country to describe property ownership after the country started expanding from the goofy Meets and Bounds system used in the colonies. The first try at the T and R system was in Ohio, and it was a rectangular system artificially laid down on the earth's surface. (Think for a minute of the problems that will cause because the earth isn't flat.) This system consisted of "perfect" squares 6 miles by 6 miles that resulted in a 36 square mile square which was then divided into 1 mile by 1 mile squares called SECTIONS. Anytime the government surveyors got a new contract to lay out new areas for settlement they had to number the Townships (north & south) from some "Baseline" somewhere and the Ranges were numbered (ease & west) from a "Prime Meridian". These Baselines and Prime Meridians are likely to fall most anywhere, but they are the reference lines for the numbering of the Townships and Ranges. (And by the way, do NOT confuse these surveyor's townships with the civil administration townships. Only sometimes are they the same.) Now if you noted above that this was a rectangular system laid down on the curved earth's surface you can see that lots of corrections have to be worked into the layout. This is part of the reason for a new Baseline and Prime Meridian once in a while but more often the surveyors had to put little jogs in the layout of T's and R's and sometimes the strict 1 mile by 1 mile rule got badly bent. Up here in MN they really had trouble when their compasses got messed up by all the iron in the ground. To return to the original post about this, none of this T and R layout has much of anything to do with the Longitude and Latitude system (which WAS designed to fit the curved earth) and maps that show Long. and Lat. certainly do not all show the T. and R. system because they are not related. The maps that DO show the Township and Range system the best are any of the county maps from your state DOT and especially ANY of the maps published by the US Geological Survey. The USGS puts out a good set of 1:250,000 scale maps that show all the T and R lines and numbers. The best for detailed property layouts are the 1:24,000 scale maps called "7 & 1/2 Min. quads." Remember that the whole idea for this Township and Range system is for property description, hence the individual Sections (1 mi. by 1 mi., remember?) are divided using "Northwest quarter of the Southeast quarter" jargon. And that I'm sure is WAY more than any of you wanted to know. Sorry, I just got started and couldn't stop. The Official Word on all this is at this URL: http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/standards/part3_stds/pl_a.html DW in MN