Dividing Up the West.

American colonists moved into the land west of the Appalachian Mountains in the eighteenth century. After achieving independence in 1783, Americans crossed these mountains in greater numbers. The Land Ordinance of 1785 made the process of Western land ownership easier. Federal surveyors divided the land into six-mile-square townships, which were further sorted into 36 sections of 640 acres each. These sections, in turn, could be further subdivided into 320-, 160-, 80-, and 40-acre units. The end result was the partitioning of large sections of the Trans-Appalachian West into neat squares. Dividing land into orderly squares facilitated sales and, later, ownership. However, the system ignored the topography of the land. As a result some farmers were stuck with uplands without access to waterways. Further, because the surveyed lines ignored the contours of western watersheds, erosion led to land degradation...