Mapping Kansas And Nebraska The Role Of The General Land Office

Authors

Ronald E. Grim, Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress

Date of this Version

Summer 1985

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 3, Summer 1985, pp. 177-97.

Comments

Copyright 1985 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

The rectangular alignment of fields, farmsteads, and roads is one of the most striking characteristics of the settlement pattern of the Great Plains. As most students of this region's cultural landscape are aware, the dominant factor in the formation of this regular, geometric pattern was the federal government's rectangular survey system. The basic features of this survey system (base lines, principal meridians, 36-square-mile townships, sections, and quarter sections) have been outlined in introductory geography and cartography textbooks, while historical and cultural geographers have examined the system's effect on the landscape.¹ In addition, much has been written about the land alienation process and the development of the General Land Office, the federal agency that administered the newly developed cadastral system.² Few writers, however, have specifically addressed the mapping activities that were an integral part of the land survey and disposal system.³

This article examines the mapping activities of the General Land Office in Kansas and Nebraska. By focusing on these two states, it is possible to identify the personnel and procedures involved in the cartographic process, the geographical and temporal progress of the mapping program, and the resulting manuscript and published cartographic records. The General Land Office's role in Kansas and Nebraska does not represent a unique situation in the agency's mapping activities, but it does provide an example of the General Land Office's role in mapping the Great Plains.

Previous cartographic portrayals of this region were limited to the basic elements of the landscape documenting the experiences of early explorers and military expeditions.⁴ On the other hand, the General Land Office's mapping activities represent a new phase in the cartographic representation of the Great Plains, because those activities resulted in the first comprehensive topographic mapping of the area.

THE CARTOGRAPHIC PROCESS IN KANSAS AND NEBRASKA

By the time the General Land Office surveys reached the Great Plains, a fairly well-defined system of surveying and mapping had been established, complete with its own bureaucracy and standardized procedures. Surveying of the public domain began in Ohio following the passage of the Land Ordinance of 1785 and proceeded westward, paralleling the westward expansion of the settlement frontier. In Kansas and Nebraska, General Land Office activities commenced in 1854 after the Kansas-Nebraska Act established the two territories. Both territories were combined under one surveyor general until 1867. Thereafter, they were separate offices until the Kansas surveys were completed in 1876 and the Nebraska surveys in 1895.