Point of Beginning

This was an unexpected but thrilling find, along the Ohio River at the OH/PA border: the point of beginning of the original township/range system devised by Thomas Jefferson for surveying (and settling) the frontier and the west.

The marker. For some reason it is erected 1,050 feet from the original survey point, right at the state line.

This system is why the American landscape from Ohio to the Rockies is rectilinear, with a north-south or east-west road every mile for a thousand miles or more. Creating an all-encompassing system for dividing land made it much easier for the government to establish governmental boundaries and sell land to white settlers headed for the frontier. Though based on the Roman example, the Jeffersonian system is the largest land division system ever enacted, and has profoundly shaped the way American communities function and the way American people relate to the landscape.