Irregular or fractional townships with fewer than a full 36 sections are created where full townships cannot be laid out due to existing senior boundaries, such as Spanish/Mexican ranchos, Indian reservations, state boundary lines, etc. Survey townships exist in some form in most states other than the original Thirteen Colonies, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vermont, and Maine.

The northern and westernmost tier of sections in each township are designed to take up the convergence of the east and west township boundary lines or range lines, as well as any error in the survey measurements, and therefore these sections vary slightly from being one square mile or 640 acres (260 ha). Townships are normally a square approximately six miles (9.7 km) on a side with cardinal boundaries conforming to meridians and parallels, containing 36 sections of one square mile (2.6 km 2) each. Townships were originally surveyed and platted by the United States General Land Office, using contracted private survey crews, and are marked on the United States Geological Survey maps of the United States. A reference to the township will look something like 'Township 2 North Range 3 East', or 'T2N,R3E' and such a notation is used in property descriptions based on the PLSS. Survey townships are generally referred to by a number based on the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). Main article: Survey township Diagram of survey township Hierarchy of systemic numbering in the PLSS Provided certain conditions are met, a charter township is mostly exempt from annexation to contiguous cities or villages, and carries additional rights and responsibilities of home rule. A charter township, found only in the state of Michigan, is similar to a civil township.Civil townships are generally given a name, sometimes written with the included abbreviation 'Twp'. Counties are the primary divisional entities in many states, thus the powers and organization of townships varies from state to state. A civil township is a unit of local government, generally a civil division of a county.A survey township is nominally six by six miles square, or 23,040 acres. A survey township is simply a geographic reference used to define property location for deeds and grants as surveyed and platted by the General Land Office (GLO).Term for several types of geographic areasĪ township in some states of the United States is a small geographic area.

Range and township definition