Land Ordinance of 1785

The United States Congress of the Confederation passed the Land Ordinance of 1785 to establish a system for surveying and selling western land to American settlers.¹ Adopted in May 1785, the Ordinance was primarily the effort of William Grayson and Rufus King, before being later reviewed and supported by a committee led by Thomas Jefferson.² It was part of a series of ordinances that set the standards for new states to join the country, and its impact can still be seen over much of the United States today.³

After the American Revolutionary War, the newly formed United States needed to decide how to organize their newly acquired territory. Naturally, the former colonies became states, but many of them disputed boundaries and territorial claims with one another, especially to the west. But the bigger question was the land outside of the colonies. The country had gained a large swath of unorganized land east of the Mississippi River.⁴ To address the organization of this land, the Confederation Congress passed three major ordinances between 1784, 1785, and 1787.

First, the Land Ordinance of 1784 established the goal of organizing land into major divisions that could later become states. Henry Pursell’s Map of the United States of N. America (1784) highlights Jefferson’s initial 1784 vision for how this unorganized land could be divided. Jefferson’s plan, however, did not contain the details necessary for the survey and sale, as well as the political processes necessary for the land to become settled and achieve statehood.⁵ To address these shortcomings, the Land Ordinance of 1785 created the framework for the survey and sale of unorganized land. The ordinance called for the land to be divided into a grid of townships, which themselves could be split into individual parcels to be sold.⁶ This was expended on by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which clarified the political processes for the territories to achieve statehood and determined how they would be governed in the interim.⁷ These ordinances were among the most significant pieces of early American legislation, and they remained in effect after the U.S. Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation with the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1789.⁸

The Land Ordinance of 1785 defined townships as the base unit by which land parcels could be sold and towns would be developed. Each township was measured by a surveyor as a six-by-six-mile square, with straight boundaries north to south and east to west.⁹ This practice uniformly distributed townships over the northwest. Surveyors started measurements on the Ohio River directly west from Pennsylvania’s southern border. They moved north then west in columns as shown in Thomas Hutchins’s Plat of The Seven Ranges of Townships (1800). After being surveyed, each township was further split into thirty-six sections, each a one-by-one mile square.¹⁰

As each township was surveyed, a numbering system was used for further organization. Each column of townships running south to north was considered a range, with the southernmost township being number one in the range, the next township north being number two in the range, and so on. By this system, every township was distinguished by the range it was in and its number within the range.¹¹ Each square mile within the township was numbered in a similar fashion. Beginning from the southeast edge with section 1, surveyors numbers sections 2 through 6 from north to south, and section 7 would begin the next column west of section 1.¹² The Ordinance of 1785 dictated that the township reserve at least four sections for the federal government and one section for a public school.¹³ Each township had the same sections reserved. The federal government reserved sections 8, 11, 26, and 29 for future sale, though they could reserve more if they discovered valuable resource deposits.¹⁴ Section 16 was for public schools.

Regarding the sale of the land, every other township was sold differently. The Ordinance of 1785 directed the sale of odd numbered townships in each range be sold entirely (apart from the reserved sections). Even numbered townships could be sold by the individual section.¹⁵ Each sale was sold by public auction, with a minimum price of one dollar per acre, making the cheapest possible purchase 640 dollars for a single section.¹⁶

Today, the effects of the Land Ordinance of 1785 can be seen in political boundaries and local governance. The original township definition established by the Ordinance is still a legal unit of land measurement, now referred to as “survey townships.” Civil townships, which are a form of local government geographically in between a city and county, often follow these original survey township boundaries in much of the present-day Midwest.¹⁷ Recently, scholars have also blamed the Ordinance for adverse effects on the environment, with the process of creating unnaturally square boundaries ignoring any natural features and encouraging mass farming practices. Although townships may not bear the sole blame for these developments, by the 1930s nearly one-hundred percent of natural prairie land in the United States had been converted to agricultural land. The Land Ordinance of 1785 continues to have a lasting impact on how land is organized and used in the United States.

Bibliography

Arvidson, Adam Regn. “Lines on the Prairie.” Michigan Quarterly Review 51, no. 2 (2012): 207–23.

[Geib, George W. “The Land Ordinance of 1785: A Bicentennial Review.” Indiana Magazine of History 81, no. 1 (March 1985): 1–13.] (https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/10600)

Onuf, Peter S. Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019.

Smith, Ronald A. “Freedom of Religion and the Land Ordinance of 1785.” Journal of Church and State 24, no. 3 (September 1982): 589–602.

Visher, Stephen S. “The Location of Indiana Towns and Cities.” Indiana Magazine of History 51, no. 4 (December 1955): 341–46.