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I always thought that townships and US Public Land Survey section
divisions existed nationwide. Wow, I just looked it up and you're right.
They don't exist out east... Who would'a thought? I guess I learn
something new everday:
"The United States Public Land Survey (USPLS) started with the Land
Ordinance of 1785 and covers all US land that was not settled by the
time of the official government survey. It does not include the east
coast states including Kentucky and Tennessee or Texas. Small areas of
other states that were settled before the survey also technically
excluded. This explains the odd shapes of many mining claims in the
west. Latter title transfers followed USPLS lines."
Like yours, our school districts fail to follow any logic what so ever.
We have the most irregular shapes for those, such that I don't even know
what they are. I remember my bus route back in the day -- we'd head a
few good miles closer toward the town our branch is in for part of the
route, but then the bus from that district would come a few miles into
our area and pass along side us on the same road at a certain point
further our area in the route. It seems they were just interwoven
between each other with long paths kind of like forks with the teeth
interlocking each other. I was the only student in my entire district
that was a member of the church, the only other member being the
assistant librarian. History class was frustrating when the teachers
would speak of the mormon pioneers inaccurately and refused to listen to
me attempt to correct them. Many years later (after I went away to
college and returned to the area) that librarian moved to another ward.
As far as I'm aware now it is just my parents and I that are the only
members residing in this school district even still, and it covers an
area of at least 3 townships. However, we did get I think two or three
media referrals for the Finding Faith in Christ DVD recently in this
district... so who knows, maybe something will happen. We have a good
number of townships with no village or community in them of any kind.
Some are lucky if they have a yellow-blinking-light at one of their
intersections, such as ours... Actually the light exists on the township
dividing line so the two townships share one blinking yellow traffic
light. We have several districts that list names of two or three
communities on the side of their busses, as it is more cost effective to
bus the kids all to one place than to attempt having smaller schools in
the different areas.
Anyway, the township abbreviations and section numbers work well for us
out here, as we can easily see it on the map. The only thing that is
kind of annoying is that we have two townships that are more of a
township and a half in size, due to the shoreline with the great lakes
or the county line being in a percuilar spot. Those townships start
their section numbers over again 1-36 and then 1-18, or perhaps just
19-36 depending on where it falls on the map. That's annoying as you get
duplicate numbers. Our solution was to make the last of the three
letters be N or S and have two seperate abbreviations for the north or
south half of the township. It works well as long as nobody tries to
assign the same 3-letter abbreviation to any other township in the stake
boundaries.
Recently I started putting the same geocodes in the appartment /
building number field of the online referral system
(http://referrals.lds.org/ which your bishop's unit website password
might already let you access but you probably shouldn't if you have full
time missionaries in your area because it may greatly confuse your
mission office if they are still running MOS). This way we can sort the
list of missionary referrals in our boundaries by appartment number
field and get the referrals printed in order by township location, so we
can more easily figure out when we'll be able to get out to a certain
area to follow up with them, being as how we have to do our own
member-missionary work here since we don't have any full time
missionaries. I suggested that they add a geocode feature to that system
but I doubt they will. It would be nice for the ward mission leader to
be able to break things up a bit. For now though the appartment number
field works just fine, and if there actually is an appartment number to
assign we just put it to the right of the geocode in parenthesis.
-Jeff
John Taber wrote:
>If we had townships and sections here, I'd use them. As it turns out,
>while Pennsylvania and New Jersey break counties down by boroughs and
>townships (and have school districts follow them) Maryland, Delaware and
>Virginia don't do any such thing. And Delaware school districts have a
>mind of their own. What I've done is use a composite of census tracts,
>census designated places / municipalities, school districts, and counties
>to come up with the cells. My stake covers all of Delaware, six counties
>in Maryland and most of a seventh, plus one school district in
>Pennsylvania. The cells cover that territory, plus a few more
>Pennsylvania school districts, and a couple of branches in neighboring
>stakes that are on our peninsula. (The latter round out that seventh
>county in Maryland and bring in two counties in Virginia.)
>What I have done is create virtual townships, squares about ten kilometers
>on a side, that cover this area. I assigned each row in the grid a letter
>(or number, once I passed "Z"), and each column a letter. Each cell's
>first letter is the "range" and the second letter (or number) the center
>of the cell would fall in to. If necessary (and it is in the more urban
>areas) I've added another letter or number to that.
>Despite all the cutting and merging, now that there are 600 cells, they
>almost never cross a school district or ward/branch boundary. Where they
>do, I can always add a fourth letter to clarify (and will anyway for the
>Spanish and YSA branches.)
>John Taber
>Assistant Stake Clerk (Membership / Boundaries)
>Wilmington Delaware Stake
>>-- Jeff Phillips <jeffp at jeffszone.com> wrote:
>>Eric Bunker wrote:
>>>Stake Geo Codes are so much more easier to do if you have the ward clerks
>>creating the divisions and imputing the codes into MLS.
>>>>Eric
>>>>Clerk
>>Queen Creek Arizona Stake
>>>>>>>>We use a 3 letter abbreviation for the township, followed by two digits
>01-36 for the square-mile section within the township. These are printed
>clearly on some maps, such as the ones we have on the bulletin board in
>the clerk's office.
>>
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