Establishing Boundaries

When the county of Cochise was incorporated in 1881 it was 6,169 square miles. The squareness of this county in comparison to the other Arizona counties is quite noticeable. Born out of the rationality of the 18th century, Cochise County's boundaries do not follow any part of the natural landscape but followed purely intellectual designations.

In 1785 the United States government began measuring land using a rectangular township and range system for all lands west of the Ohio River. This new survey method dramatically shaped the landscape of the country. It produced a grid system, replicated throughout the county, with townships each six miles square forming the basis of most settlements. These were arbitrary boundaries with no consideration given to the natural contour of the landscape.

The grid system made for much easier administration of the land. In the system used previously land was measured according to a metes and bounds system with property often following the natural contours of the land. There were a considerable number of failings with this system. Overlapping claims were common.

The grid system allowed for greater spatial control. Land grants could be made in Washington, D.C. effecting lands that were thousands of miles away. This system was part of a larger emphasis on spatial and social control in the nineteenth century.[1] With the old metes and bounds system the control of the land was essentially localized. To know the property boundary you often had to know the location of a particular landmark such as a tree, rock, path or road. Larger land divisions were often given in terms of natural boundaries, such as waterways or mountain ranges. Difficulties arose because these landmarks were often hard to define with precision. For example, there might be questions about what defined a particular river -- which branch was the main branch and which the subsidiary. This problem was manifestly apparent in southern Arizona where the boundaries between the United States and Mexico, fixed after the Mexican-American war, were interpreted differently. The treaty established the Gila River as the boundary but the two countries had differed about what constituted the river's main branch. This question was not resolved until the Gadsden purchase in 1853 established the border on a longitudinal line rather than a natural boundary.

The township survey was meant to aid settlement, providing a means for the government to grant lands with assurance of secure title and ownership. It provided cost savings compared to older forms of land surveying and it ended much of the legal disagreements over boundaries where land ownership could be contested on an individual and local basis. While it did not guarantee the accuracy of the survey, that could be determined on a global rather than a local basis.

Such an arbitrary system was not without its problems as a means for best regulating settlement. By not taking into account the natural contours of the land, it would often separate lands that made more sense grouped together or it divided resources such as land with water that might make more sense as a shared commodity. Congress initiated a discussion in 1878 about superseding the rectilineal system by one "more scientific" but it was never implemented. The Arizona land office commissioner recommended against it mostly because the

current system was easy for everyone to understand.[2]

The first surveys of areas within Cochise County began in 1853, as soon as the ink was dry on the new land purchase. The country was not surveyed all at once though. The survey was intended to proceed from the most useful lands to the least. This order was established and continually altered by the United States Congress in an attempt to set guidelines for the precedence of surveys, and thus which lands could be claimed.

By 1876 there had only been a handfull of townships surveyed in Cochise County. On the map those are outlined in green; the 1877 township are in blue. Note on the map that the vertical lines are not perfectly straight. After every fifth township (30 miles) there is a slight shift in line. This is how a grid survey can be applied to a rounded surface (such as the earth). Even the county's western boundary has to make a shift in order to keep it within a grid system.

Footnotes

1. The extention of spatial control has been theorized by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). He is specifically addressing disciplinary techniques but he suggests the broader implifications of these methods to all attempts at "assuring the ordering of human multiplicities." p. 218.