The United States has more arable land than any other country. If you drove around the US, about half of what you would see out your window would be farmland of some sort. About 400 million acres within the US are planted in crops, and over 600 million are used to graze livestock. Those numbers have been shrinking by about 3,000 acres per year, as suburbs and commercial developments gobble up farmland (EPA). Still, farming remains extremely important both as an economic activity and as a hidden element in our daily existence. So, reading the landscapes of farming is a valuable skill for the well-educated citizen.
Cadastral Patterns
If you’re flying over the US, looking out the window of the plane and paying attention, you’ll notice a variety of cadastral patterns, which reflect are the various systems the government has used to divide the land among people. Cadastral systems are most evident in farm country, but they also affect the division of land in cities. The patterns created by the various land division schemes both reflect and shape our politics, culture, and economy. There are several cadastral systems used worldwide, but in the US, only a few merit our attention.
Metes and Bounds
English settlers introduced the metes and bounds cadastral system during the colonial period. Generally, those who wished to obtain land during the 17th and 18th century would scout a piece of unclaimed land, perhaps near the town where they lived or on the frontier, and upon finding a suitable location they would hire a surveyor to inspect the land and write a description of the desired plot of land. This description constituted a legal claim to the land that was in turn registered with government authorities. The shape and size of the land parcels were quite random, often described using very local landmarks, like trees, boulders, or streams. Here’s an example:
Figure 3-34: Diagram of the land parcel described by the passage quoted below. Note the highly irregular outline. Source: Virtual Museum of Surveying.
Beginning at a stone on the Bank of Doe River, at a point where the highway from A. to B. crosses said river (see point marked C. on Diagram 1); thence 40 degrees North of West 100 rods to a large stump; then 10 degrees North of West 90 rods; thence 15 degrees West of North 80 rods to an oak tree (see Witness Tree on Diagram 1); then due East 150 rods to the highway; thence following the course of the highway 50 rods due North; then 5 degrees North of East 90 rods; thence 45 degrees of South 60 rods; thence 10 degrees North of East 200 rods to the Doe River; thence following the course of the river Southwesterly to the place of beginning. Source: surveyhistory.org
In the regions of the country using metes and bounds, local property maps eventually came to look like a huge jigsaw puzzle, as waves of settlers made claims to unoccupied plots of land. The irregularity of this land division system created numerous problems, not the least of which was the difficulty in determining property lines demarcated by moveable objects like trees, rocks, and streams.
Metes and bounds also contributed to an unfair distribution of quality farmland. People that arrived early to a location on the frontier often carved out parcels of high-quality land for themselves, leaving poorer quality land for latecomers. Often, those who carved out choice parcels were wealthy land speculators, the surveyors themselves, or politically well-connected people. Once in possession of the best lands, they stood to dominate local politics and the local economy. Many land speculators, made fortunes buying up choice lands early and cheaply, then selling them to those arriving later the frontier.
Today, so-called “house flippers” engage a similar business model. People who arrived late to the frontier often found available parcels of land were of poor quality and expensive. In some places, this exacerbated class distinctions because the quality of farm fields varied greatly. Colonial tobacco farming regions were especially vulnerable to this condition because tobacco plants quickly exhaust the soil. Farmers with poor soil and without adequate farmlands to leave some fields fallow would soon face bankruptcy, only to be bought out by wealthier neighbors who were bought, or inherited, prime farmlands earlier.
Figure 3-35: Ross County, Ohio. The region west of the Scioto River is the Virginia Military District. It uses metes and bounds. East of the river, the township and range system is used. Note the stark difference in pattern. Think about the implications these patterns have upon the culture, politics and economics of each region. Data courtesy of Ross County GIS (Greg Rouse)
Township and Range –Grid Squares
Thomas Jefferson recognized several problems with the metes and bounds system, so he introduced the township and range cadastral system, officially known as the Public Land Survey System, as a logical, well-ordered replacement for metes and bounds that divided land using a rectangular grid system. Jefferson hoped that if each farm family moving to the frontier could buy a farmstead of roughly the same size as all his/her neighbors, as long as the quality of that land was reasonably similar, a robust middle class of yeoman farmers would emerge, invigorating democracy.
Deeply in debt following the War for Independence, but flush with land acquired from the British in the war, the continental congress passed into law Jefferson’s idea as the Land Ordinance of 1785. This law has since regulated the sale of most of American land west of the Appalachian Mountains. It allowed homesteaders to buy land without seeing it first, did not require complex surveying and description, and sped up the settlement of the frontier.
Figure 3-36: San Joaquin Valley, CA. Multiple political ideas and government policies are evident on this farming landscape in arid California.
The basic unit of division in the grid system is the township, a square parcel of land six miles wide. Townships were sub-divided first into 36 one-square-mile parcels called sections. Square mile sections (640 acres) were subdivided further into quarter sections (160 acres) and quarter-quarter sections of forty acres. Homesteaders generally purchased quarter sections where rain was plentiful. But where the climate is drier, and ranching displaced farming, larger parcels were more common.
The grid square dominates the American landscape. It’s hard to overstate the impact of this system. Roads, farmlands, houses, property lines, telephone poles are just but a few items on the landscape locked onto “the grid”. Even the room you’re in now, along with your desk, couch, or chest of drawers, is probably aligned with Jefferson’s grid. The brilliant landscape essayist JB Jackson argued that the grid is a grand symbol of the kind of thinking that characterized the Age of Enlightenment while also affecting the cultural practices in regions dominated by the grid, perhaps imparting a sense of order and conformity to communities locked into the grid. Even the personal insult “square” that refers to persons who are orderly and conformist may be tied to the pervasiveness of the grid.
In much of New England, the land was divided very differently. Colonial-era communal-style agricultural villages were centered on village greens. These were abandoned in the Midwest and far west, and communal agriculture gave way to independent farming – a type of individualism encouraged by the grid. The implications are profound in terms of the political and economic philosophies characterizing modern American politics. Chapter 8 explores more deeply the competing political philosophies deeply associated with the various US cadastral systems.
Jefferson’s cultural and political goals have been mostly realized. Democracy did indeed flourish, and to this day, the region of the country with the most equitable distribution of wealth remains where the township and range system created innumerable farmsteads of roughly equal size and equal quality. Interestingly, the Gini coefficient, a measure of income equality, is generally lowest in the grid-dominated states of the Midwest where the middle class remains large.
Figure 3-37: Fayette County, Ohio - Section 16 in many townships was given to the local the school district to generate school funding and to provide space for a local school. Abandoned one-room school houses like this dot the rural landscapes of the Midwest.
Perhaps the only disadvantage to the grid system is that it seems to encourage farmers to plow their fields in straight lines, regardless of the topography of the fields, a practice that increases soil erosion and water loss, compared to the more eco-friendly contour plowing practiced more frequently by farmers living on metes and bounds lands in the East.
Long Lots
Colonists from other parts of Europe, especially the French, introduced the Long Lotscadastral system. Derived from the seigneurial land tenure system used by the French in their colonial holdings (mostly in what is now Canada), it was replicated in elsewhere in North America where French settlement occurred, most notably Louisiana, but you can find evidence of Long Lots near other French settlements like St. Louis, Detroit, and Vincennes, Indiana. Long lots are narrow parcels of land, typically one-tenth as wide as long, with one of the narrow ends generally bordering a transportation corridor, generally a river or stream.
Saint James Parish, LA. Long lot cadastral patterns create numerous ribbon farms along the Mississippi River. This land division system profoundly affects the road network, housing and perhaps even social and cultural systems. Note the equal access to the river (and now highway). Data courtesy of St. James Parish GIS.
The political implications of long lots are like Jefferson’s grid because each property owner had a roughly equal chance to succeed in the regional farming economy. Access to transportation (e.g., a river) was a crucial element for farmers hoping to sell their crops. Dividing land in this fashion also insured farmers reasonably equal access to quality farmland. Soil characteristics near rivers differ by distance from the riverbank. Sandier soils are often found near the river. High-quality loamy soils are found at an intermediate distance from the river, and in the bottomlands more distant from the riverbank, less desirable, clay-rich soils are more common. Farmers in this system commonly arranged farm activities to mimic the spatial logic of Von Thünen’s model presented earlier in the chapter. Can you apply the logic of the Von Thünen model to a long lot? Long lots create cultural conditions as well. Because families built their houses near the river, neighbors lived close to one another. The French also divided family holdings evenly among all children (or just males) upon the death of a family elder, resulting in the creation of additional narrow strip farms, each with a house at the riverfront after each successive generation. You’ll remember from Chapter 2, that shotgun houses may have become more popular in part because they fit nicely on long lot style land parcels.
Spanish Land Grants
In the American Southwest, where vast areas were once governed by Spain (1521-1821) and later Mexico (1820-1846). Spain and Mexico both advanced land distribution policies that created massive land grants that are still evident on the landscape, especially in California.
Spanish (like the French) families were less likely to practice primogeniture, the tradition in which families bequeath all their lands to the oldest son. The Spanish and French were more likely to divide property among children. As a result, there was a smaller pool of landless people willing to move to the Americas from those areas. The British, as well as some other parts of Northern Europe, did practice primogeniture, which encouraged vast numbers of “second sons” to move to North America. Without an excess of landless young men and/or significant religious minorities, the Spanish had some trouble getting Spaniards to colonize their lands in the Americas.
Figure 3-39: Solvang, CA - Mission Santa Ynez once controlled all the lands in this photo, a massive land grant from the King of Spain. Soon after the fall of the Spanish crown, these lands were acquired by wealthy elites (Californios). Land tenure issues would likely plague California today, like they do in Latin America, had the US not taken California from Mexico by force in 1848 and instituted metes and bounds.
A lack of willing migrants and a very difficult path to the Pacific Coast, combined with challenging farming conditions discouraged European settlement of the western margins of North America for hundreds of years. To entice settlement of their claims in the Americas Spanish Kings made significant land grants available to those willing to move to “New Spain”, especially if the person was a political ally of the king. In California, about 30 grants were made by the Spanish crown, but corrupt and weak Mexican governors granted many thousands of acres in land grants to political allies, friends, and family members and the process created a huge network of plantation-style ranchos across California during the Mexican era.
A feudal style land tenure system evolved in California during the Mexican era, characterized by an exceptional concentration of land, wealth, and power into the hands of a few dozen families, almost all of whom operated massive cattle ranches, employing Indians and mestizo peasant-laborers. Dozens of huge ranchos remained in the late 19thcentury. Some mimicked the large agricultural plantations of the Deep South – but without the enslaved labor force. However, after the Mexican-American War(1848), most large ranchos were broken up, because either the US government did not recognize the legitimacy of the property claims, or powerful American interests simply wanted to steal the land – which had been previously stolen from Native Californians. Real estate developers made fortunes by buying well-placed ranchos and turning them into thousands of small suburban home lots. A few have managed to survive, sometimes as state parks or wilderness areas, like the Ahmanson Ranch, at the western border of Los Angeles County, which was formerly part of the 113,000-acre Rancho San Jose de Gracias de Simi.
Where the Spanish system survived in Latin America, the maldistribution of land had profound effects on the region’s political, economic, and social structures. Where agriculture is the predominant industry, land equals wealth. Therefore, where large percentages of the land were given to a few powerful families, oligarchies developed alongside a disenfranchised peasantry.
Figure 3-40: San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, CA. The Spanish and Mexican governments made many very large land grants to powerful interests. For example, the El Encino ranch on this map was 4,460 acres. After the US acquired California, the US government allowed homesteaders access to the small 40-acre plots, but many American claimed more in the West.
The Spanish Land Grant system worked well to advance plantation economic systems discussed earlier in the text and together created enormous hardship for many people in Latin America. Democracy, urbanization, and industrialization diminished the effects of the Spanish Land Grant system in the US, but inequality remains high in regions of the country where this system was predominant.
Farm Buildings
Agricultural buildings provide clues about past and modern farm systems. Barns are the most obvious element of the agricultural landscape, but fencing, barbed wire, grain silos, and other outbuildings are sources of landscape information, readable by the trained geographer. As you ride in the agricultural countryside, try to understand the narrative evident in the landscape.
Consider for example the different styles of barns found across the United States. Barns can be general-purpose structures or may be built specifically for farmers engaged in a specific type of agriculture. The style of the barn and agricultural outbuildings sometimes reflect the ethnic groups that settled a region and simultaneously provide clues to the political, cultural, and religious environment in which barns were built. For example, the tobacco barn below serves as a reminder to passers-by of the economics of tobacco farming, slavery, inequality, and soil exhaustion. If you were to see Bavarian hay barns dotting the American roadside, you could expect the local culture to exhibit many other cultural traits from Germany.
Figure 3-42: Green County, TN. This tobacco barn is a good example of a purpose-built barn. The crop hangs from many poles arranged in the well-ventilated barn to allow proper drying before the product is shipped for processing. Source: Wikimedia.Figure 3-43: Mittenwald, Germany. In the Bavarian Alps, small hay barns, made of locally available logs, dot the landscape and provide a due to the folk heritage of the community here. Similar structures were introduced to the American landscape, but are rare in the US today.Figure 3-44: US Highway 20, New York: Dairy Barns such as this one dot the landscape of the Northeastern US. Note the silos for cattle feed in the winter months. Nearlly every building is connected to the next. How might that be an adaptation to the local climate?
Figure 3-36: San Joaquin Valley, CA. Multiple political ideas and government policies are evident on this farming landscape in arid California.
Figure 3-37: Fayette County, Ohio - Section 16 in many townships was given to the local the school district to generate school funding and to provide space for a local school. Abandoned one-room school houses like this dot the rural landscapes of the Midwest.
Saint James Parish, LA. Long lot cadastral patterns create numerous ribbon farms along the Mississippi River. This land division system profoundly affects the road network, housing and perhaps even social and cultural systems. Note the equal access to the river (and now highway). Data courtesy of St. James Parish GIS.
Figure 3-39: Solvang, CA - Mission Santa Ynez once controlled all the lands in this photo, a massive land grant from the King of Spain. Soon after the fall of the Spanish crown, these lands were acquired by wealthy elites (Californios). Land tenure issues would likely plague California today, like they do in Latin America, had the US not taken California from Mexico by force in 1848 and instituted metes and bounds. 
Figure 3-44: US Highway 20, New York: Dairy Barns such as this one dot the landscape of the Northeastern US. Note the silos for cattle feed in the winter months. Nearlly every building is connected to the next. How might that be an adaptation to the local climate?