Seven Ranges

The Seven Ranges was the first area to be surveyed by the American government as part of the Northwest Territory. Thomas Hutchins, the geographer of the United States, carried out the survey according to the guidelines provided in the Land Ordinance of 1785. Hutchins began his survey work where the eastern boundary of the Northwest Territory met the Ohio River, at modern-day East Liverpool, Ohio in Columbiana County. This starting point was known as the "Point of Beginning." Each range was made up of a vertical row of townships. Hutchins died before completing all of the survey work, but the government continued the process after his death.

The standard surveying method in colonial America was called Metes and Bounds. This was a primitive surveying system and needed to be replaced. The Metes and Bounds system of survey describes tracts of land without reference to a standard base line survey, but rather to neighboring tracts, roads, trees, rocks, meanders of waterways, etc. But it was the best that could be had at the time it was used.

After the revolutionary war, the Continental Congress established a better surveying system to be implemented in its frontier wilderness lands, the so called Northwest Territory.

In time, the new Public Land Survey System was used in all the states of the Northwest Territory (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin. It was also adopted by Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and all the states west of the Mississippi River.

The Seven-Ranges is the initial point of the land survey for much of the continental United States. To see some of the results of this survey go to GoogleEarth.com and look down at any of the flatter western states. Notice the grid-like nature of roads as well as farm-land--the fields and pastures. This patch-work of grids has its roots in the Seven-Ranges survey of Ohio.