Mapping Montana: The Federal Land Surveys of 1867-1868

LAND SURVEYING AND MAPPING played key roles in shaping the American West, asserting federal authority over the nation's landed domain while enabling settlers to obtain legal land titles. Under the system established by the Land Ordinance of 1785, federal surveys divided the public domain outside the states into six-mile by six-mile squares, subdivided these townships into thirty-six square-mile sections, then split the square miles into 160-acre quarter sections. The first step in this process was the selection of an initial point from which to draw the north-south principal meridian line and an east-west baseline, the coordinates from which all other lines were derived.

ON A BRIGHT, WARM DAY IN AUGUST 1867, residents of Sterling, Montana Territory, a lively Madison County gold-mining camp located thirty miles northeast of the territorial capital of Virginia City, were treated to a visit by dignitaries-a federal surveying party under the direction of the celebrated Civil War general Solomon Meredith, newly appointed as surveyor general for the territory. During the late war Meredith had distinguished himself as the commander of the "Iron Brigade," a unit of Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan volunteers that suffered a greater number of casualties proportionally than any other Union brigade. Meredith himself had been wounded on two occasions, the last seriously at Gettysburg. Herculean in size-he stood a ramrod six feet, seven inches-and indisputably courageous, Meredith made an imposing target on the battlefield.1

Justifications for Meredith's presidential appointment as Montana's surveyor general went beyond his military record. By supporting President Andrew Johnson's moderate Reconstruction policies, and by vigorously opposing the efforts of Radical Republicans to impeach him, Meredith had built up substantial political capital. Given his politics, his demonstrated leadership ability, and his military familiarity with mapping, the general seemed an appropriate person to preside over the surveying of the territory's public domain and to select a suitable point from which to orient it.

The appearance of this party in the eastern foothills of the Tobacco Root Mountains must have come as a surprise to Sterling's inhabitants, as all previous indications had pointed toward the selection of Beaverhead Rock, roughly seventy miles to the west by road, as the survey's starting point. After visiting Beaverhead Rock, however, the survey party had rejected it, and now, on August 7,1867, the surveyors were seeking a site that would enable them to run their lines through areas more heavily populated and subject to easier commercial and agricultural development. Because of its strategic location, the area near Sterling would earn the privilege of being among the very first in Montana to receive the advantages of federal mapping.

Surveying and mapping played important roles in shaping the American West. Hardly had the War for Independence ended when the fledgling nation's Continental Congress prepared a plan for disposing of the newly gained lands west of the original thirteen colonies. This plan-the Land Ordinance of 1785-created the township system that divided the public domain into hundreds and hundreds of six-mile by six-mile squares. Each of these squares was subdivided into thirty-six sections measuring one square mile each, then into 160-acre quarter sections. The purpose was to facilitate the orderly transfer of land from government to individual ownership without the endless litigation that had occurred as a result of earlier surveying systems, particularly the old "metes and bounds" surveys that frequently described boundaries according to natural features. Such surveys, with their reliance on corners marked by trees, rocks, stream junctions, and other ill-defined topographical features, invited title and boundary disputes and placed an enormous burden on the courts.

The Land Ordinance of 1785 evolved not only to rationalize land distribution policy, but also to set in place an ordered system of land division prior to settlement, for the United States in the 17803 was fast becoming a nation of squatters who had gotten ahead of the surveyors and taken possession of public land without government approval. This situation was particularly evident on the fastspreading western edges of settlement. The rectangular survey would assert federal authority over the nation's landed domain while helping settlers obtain legal land titles. As Everett Dick observed in his landmark study of public-land policy, on the frontier an "effective system of surveys" was "second in importance only to the preservation of life."2

The first federal territorial surveys began in Ohio and Indiana in what was then called the Northwest Territory. Surveys of other states and territories west of the Appalachians and east of the Mississippi soon followed. In the process, federal surveying came under the oversight of the General Land Office, officially created in 1812 and known today as the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior.3 In 1817 the War Department joined in the surveying effort, adding topographical engineering to its responsibilities and in 1818 incorporating that subject into the West Point curriculum. Within ten years, U.S. Army-led expeditions mapped the lower Missouri River, the Santa Fe Trail, and the Platte River. In 1832 an army expedition located the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and between 1842 and 1846 lieutenant John C. Frémont led five different mapping expeditions, one of which laid out the road from Missouri to Oregon that would prove of immense value to westering immigrants.