building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

The lands freed from the American Indians were then subdivided according to a
model that we will try to illustrate briefly. The basic module consisted of the socalled
Township, a six‐mile long square (6x6 equal to 93 square km), created by lines
that crossed perpendicularly from North‐South and East‐West [Figure 48]. Each
Township was formed in turn by 36 sections of a square mile each, namely 640
acres (2.6 sq. km), which represented the sale unit at the cost of a dollar per acre.
Sections and Townships followed one another in a regular sequence, which
determined the geography of the new states and sometimes merged with natural
borders, such as the Ohio River [Figure 47].
The sections were set side by side and numbered according to a precise scheme,
and some of them had to be reserved for public purposes or put aside for future
sale by the Federal Government, once the costs of the land had risen, thanks to
private investments in the bordering lands.
The Land Act of 1796 changed the numbering for the identification of the sections
and in the following years a series of changes were introduced, in particular as
regards the minimum sale unit. The system, in fact, favoured the large landowners,
who were the only ones able to buy and cultivate portions of territory measuring
640 acres. For this reason, during Jefferson’s time when expansion turned to the
Louisiana territories, recently bought from France, the minimum sale unit was first
halved (to 320 acres) and then halved again to a quarter (160 acres).
Notwithstanding these transformations, it remained difficult for the investors to
make a profit and cultivate such large portions of territory. Therefore, in 1820,
Congress cut the sale unit even further to an eighth (80 acres). However, the Land
Acts set no limits to the purchase and imposed no obligations on the purchasers, all
of which ended by favouring speculation and the formation of large estates. The
path was being cleared for more liberal policies, so that the time was ripe for the
Homestead Act of 1862, which guaranteed easier access to state‐owned lands.
By adopting this model, an attempt was made to control several cases of town
expansion. The case of Savannah 88 , quoted previously in Reps’s words, is significant.
88 See REPS, John William, Town Planning in Frontier America, Princeton, University Press, 1965, pp.
238‐260 (it. tr. by M. Terni, S. Magistretti, La costruzione dell’ America urbana; introduction by
Francesco Dal Co, Milano: Franco Angeli, 1976, pp. 212‐228)
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