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Meridians, Baselines, Range and Township lines in California

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mrsman:
I got down on a rabbit hole of an issue looking at this stuff.

I remember as a kid seeing the range and township boundaries on Thomas Guide maps, especially in relatively undeveloped areas.  But harder to locate now.

Anyway, three principal meridians (and thier baseleines) serve California from the following Initial Points:

Humboldt (the very NW corner)
Mount Diablo (most of the state and all of Nevada)
(Mount) San Bernardino (Southern California)

BLM, of course, has a whole nomenclature for these terms and the main lines and their main subdivisions as used for surveying purposes.

For the most part, each township is six miles square.  So the township boundaries are six miles apart from each other.  Standard parallels and meridians are 24 miles apart rom each other.  The east-west township boundaries are known as township lines and the north-south township boundaries are known as range lines.

The northern boundary of SLO, Kern, and San Bernardino (forming a straight line of couny border across the state) sits at the sixth standard south of the Mount Diablo baseline.  Seventh standard road is 24 miles further south.

Baseline Road in San Bernarino County and eastern LA county is on the baseline for (Mount) San Bernardino.  It runs throught the Santa Monica Mountains in Central LA.  The next township lines to the south are:
Adams Blvd in LA (Six miles)
Century Blvd in LA (12 miles)
190th/South/Orangethorpe (18 miles)
Garden Grove Blvd (24 miles)

The following streets run on range lines are west of the San Bernardino meridian:

Magnolia St in OC (60 miles west)
Pioneer Blvd (66 miles west)
Atlantic Ave in Long Beach (72 miles west)
Vermont Ave (78 miles west)
PCH/Sepulveda LAX/El Segundo/Manhattan Beach and Laurel Canyon in SFV (84 mile west)
Balboa Blvd (90 miles west)
Topanga Canyon (96 miles west)

I think this is neat and certainly if anyone on here can add more information, and perhaps correct any errors that I made in description, please comment.

Max Rockatansky:
I use these all the time with older county road atlases and pretty much anything related to the Forest Service road system.

roadfro:
A good deal of the land in the United States, including most of the midwest and all of the west except Hawaii, is surveyed using this system. For a primer, see the Wikipedia article on the Public Land Survey System

Given the easy grid lines that tend to be created by PLSS, you get a lot of governments that use this as a basis for laying out towns and cities. Hence why you see so many square/rectangular county borders as well as "straight line" roads and highways in the midwest. And also why you see a lot of regularly-spaced street grids in cities of the midwest and west.

This is one of those "once you see it, you can't unsee it" situations.


Many of the major streets and subdivisions in the Las Vegas area were laid out along section lines, giving rise to the phrase "section line arterials" for the major streets. I had heard the term in my early teens, but it was only after I took a surveying class in college that I realized exactly what it meant. It also helped answer a question I'd always wondered growing up in Las Vegas: Why do several north/south arterial roads have a slight curve to them when approaching Charleston Blvd? It turns out that Charleston Blvd runs along one of the major township lines and the N/S section lines don't line up on either side, so the arterial roads require a slight S-curve to keep them aligned to the section line when crossing Charleston.

abqtraveler:

--- Quote from: roadfro on September 10, 2023, 05:01:46 PM ---A good deal of the land in the United States, including most of the midwest and all of the west except Hawaii, is surveyed using this system. For a primer, see the Wikipedia article on the Public Land Survey System

Given the easy grid lines that tend to be created by PLSS, you get a lot of governments that use this as a basis for laying out towns and cities. Hence why you see so many square/rectangular county borders as well as "straight line" roads and highways in the midwest. And also why you see a lot of regularly-spaced street grids in cities of the midwest and west.

This is one of those "once you see it, you can't unsee it" situations.


Many of the major streets and subdivisions in the Las Vegas area were laid out along section lines, giving rise to the phrase "section line arterials" for the major streets. I had heard the term in my early teens, but it was only after I took a surveying class in college that I realized exactly what it meant. It also helped answer a question I'd always wondered growing up in Las Vegas: Why do several north/south arterial roads have a slight curve to them when approaching Charleston Blvd? It turns out that Charleston Blvd runs along one of the major township lines and the N/S section lines don't line up on either side, so the arterial roads require a slight S-curve to keep them aligned to the section line when crossing Charleston.

--- End quote ---
Only the 13 original states, plus Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Maine, Vermont, and Hawaii don't follow the Rectangular Survey System. Even within states that do follow the Rectangular Survey System, there are some areas that predate the RSS based on old colonial land grants, such as in parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and California (Spanish); Louisiana and Wisconsin (French), and Ohio (British).

Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Maine, and Vermont were carve-outs from Virginia (both KY and WV), North Carolina, Massachusetts, and New York/New Hampshire, respectively. Consequentially, those states inherited the survey systems of the states from which they were created.

Texas uses its own survey system (Texas Land Survey System, or TLSS) that was established when Texas gained independence from Mexico and before being annexed into the US, which is derived from Spanish and Mexican land grants. Hawaii uses a system that originated during its time as a sovereign nation. 

Going back to Maine, the northern one-third of that state uses a township and range system very similar to the Rectangular Survey System. This is a result of when Maine was separated from Massachusetts and granted statehood in 1820, there was an ongoing territorial dispute between the US and British Canada over the border between Maine and New Brunswick that culminated in the Aroostook War in 1838 and 1839. The Webster-Ashburn Treaty of 1842 settled the dispute and established the modern-day boundary between Maine and Canada. The eastern border between Maine and New Brunswick, known as the Easterly Line of the State (ELS) became the principal meridian for the township and range system that dominates northern Maine. Rather than being officially recognized as part of the Rectangular Survey System used in other parts of the country, northern Maine's township and range system is called the WELS System (West of the Easterly Line of the State), but the townships are essentially the same size as those used in the Rectangular Survey System.

mrsman:

--- Quote from: roadfro on September 10, 2023, 05:01:46 PM ---A good deal of the land in the United States, including most of the midwest and all of the west except Hawaii, is surveyed using this system. For a primer, see the Wikipedia article on the Public Land Survey System

Given the easy grid lines that tend to be created by PLSS, you get a lot of governments that use this as a basis for laying out towns and cities. Hence why you see so many square/rectangular county borders as well as "straight line" roads and highways in the midwest. And also why you see a lot of regularly-spaced street grids in cities of the midwest and west.

This is one of those "once you see it, you can't unsee it" situations.


Many of the major streets and subdivisions in the Las Vegas area were laid out along section lines, giving rise to the phrase "section line arterials" for the major streets. I had heard the term in my early teens, but it was only after I took a surveying class in college that I realized exactly what it meant. It also helped answer a question I'd always wondered growing up in Las Vegas: Why do several north/south arterial roads have a slight curve to them when approaching Charleston Blvd? It turns out that Charleston Blvd runs along one of the major township lines and the N/S section lines don't line up on either side, so the arterial roads require a slight S-curve to keep them aligned to the section line when crossing Charleston.

--- End quote ---



This is a superb article linked.  Thanks.

It links to this original square city boundary for LA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post_office_application_Los_Angeles_1866_02.jpg

As mentioned above the township boundaries included streets like Baseline, Vermont, Adams, and Atlantic.  Those streets (or their logical extension) form the ddark borders of the square that is nearest to the LA city that is denoted.

The "original" LA city boundaries are Hoover (about 1/4 mile east of Vermont), Exposition (1 mile south of Adams), Indiana (1/4 mile east of Atlantic) and Fountain (1.75 miles south of Baseline).  And it is shown in relation to the surveying.  Very interesting.

More about the original borders here:

https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/los-angeles-original-borders

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