Recently, I read a book of this same title by Curt Meine (Island Press, 2004). The book was about Aldo Leopold and the modern conservation movement. It made me think about correction lines in general and how interesting they are.
In the 1800s land surveyors divided most states west of New England up into squares to organize the land and to make for easier homesteading. The Public Land Survey System was the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson and his plan was for the land to be divided into six-mile square townships and 640 acre parcels of land called sections. This is also why our popular land parcels are in increments of 40 acres, hence “the back forty.” The resulting pattern gives us the checkerboard appearence from above that we see today: a quilt of pastures, cropfields, woodlands and city limits. When the surveyors started laying out these squares they found a problem: The earth is round. Dividing the land into perfect squares is like putting a peice of gridpaper around a tennis ball.
To solve this problem surveyors designated east-west lines as ‘correction lines,’ which occurred every 20-30 miles of latitude moving northward, to compensate for the earth’s curvature. They reoriented themselves along these baselines by shifting slightly east or west and began a straight north/south line again. As they say, ”theory meets reality.”
Here in the Midwest we have some great examples of correction lines. Mostly apparent in flat terrain rather than hilly, these reality checks are still very much with us. Ever wonder why a road comes to a T-intersection just to continue again 100 feet over? How about those strange ‘S’ curves on a seemingly straight road?
Some great examples of correction lines can be found across the entire Wisconsin/Illinois state line. This was chosen as a convenient correction line and today you can view all the way across. The above photo shows two correction lines just North of Scales Mound, IL, at the state line. Another great example is Base Line Rd. which stretches from Kane to Ogle County in Northern Illinois and another Base Line Rd. 28 miles south of that one, which serves as the boundary of 4 counties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System Public Land Survey System
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