Hey Uncle, Yeah me too, was driving the wife a little stir crazy!!
A township out here in the west of Canada is 36 square miles. Each square mile is referred to as a "section" Each "section" is 640acres. The sections are further divided into "quarters" of 160 acres. Our grid road system is surveyed out to have a north south road every 1 mile apart when travelling east or west. The east and west roads are every 2 miles apart when travelling north or south. This of course depends on topography, ponds, lakes, duck sloughs create the need for the occasional curve. To compensate for the curvature of the earth (yeah I know some of you still thinks its flat) the east west roads deflect a little bit each mile or 2 miles. As well the north south roads converge slightly to the north. To compensate for this the land is surveyed on baselines 24 miles apart north to south. The sections on the north and south side of that base line are a true 640 acres. As you move north to the "correction line" 12 miles from the baseline, those converging north south roads cause the sections to shrink slightly down to about 632 acres from 640. And vice versa as the sections were surveyed south of the base line. The sections on the north side of a correction line are about 648 acres. All land title deeds for farm land in western Canada will read the following after the acreage statement "more or less".
Too much useless information that you really didn't need to know but as a former land surveyor it was compelled to come out of me.....what can I say.
One last tidbit, an acre is 43560ft². Way back in the 1870-80's when the land was surveyed out here, they used a "chain" as the tape measure. The chain was 66 x 1 foot lengths long. 40 chains to a half mile(2640ft), 80 chains to a mile(5280ft). Each grid road allowance was 1 chain wide, 66 feet. I digress I'm doing it again.
Calgaryglide
