In Part 1 of this article, I talked about the events that led up to the survey of Michigan. I also described the establishment of the North-South "Principal Meridian" and the East-West "Base Line" that is the basis of the rectangular grid system used to measure and number all the parcels of land.

This system of land division sounds simple, but since the world is not flat, there are some complications. For any given township, if you took a perfect 6 mile by 6 mile flat and square grid and tried to drape it over the curved earth, you would find that it would need to become narrower at its northern end and that the north and south boundaries would not be parallel. To try to make as many as possible of the 1 mile square sections of land equal to their theoretical 640 acres, the surveyors made the southeastern 5 mile by 5 mile portion of a each township as near to perfectly 5 miles square as possible, then adjusted the dimensions of the northern and western tiers of sections as required to fit the curvature of the earth and fit to the neighboring townships. This is why you often encounter "Mile" roads that run straight for 6 miles within a township, then take a slight jog as they enter the next township.

At the time of the survey, there were no roads, but instead, one great forest. The survey crews used the trees to mark boundary lines by chopping notches in the sides of trees that fell directly on the section lines. This was known as blazing the trees, and all section lines in Michigan were marked by lines of blazed trees. The four corners of each section were created by the intersection of east-west and north-south lines of blazed trees. At each section corner stood four identification trees, one in each of the four neighboring sections. Each of these trees had their bark hewed off, and three rows of numbers marked on them as follows: "T 1 N" over "R 9 E" over "S 5". For this example, the numbers would indicate Town 1 North, Range 9 East (Farmington Township) Section 5 (land bounded by today's 13 Mile Road, 14 Mile Road, Drake Road, and Halsted Road).

The 36 sections in each township throughout Michigan are numbered in the same way. Section 1 is in the northeast corner with Section 2 immediately west of Section 1 and so on, until Section 6 is established in the northwest corner of the township. Then Section 7 is located directly south of Section 6 and the sections are then numbered going east ending in Section 12. Then, Section 13 is located directly south of Section 12 and the sections are numbered going west again, until all 36 sections are numbered.

The survey crews made maps of each township as they went, noting the locations of rivers, streams, Indian paths, ponds and lakes. These were connected together to create the first true maps of Michigan showing the actual shape of the lower peninsula. All previous maps of Michigan were created using coastal locations reckoned from water travel, and they varied greatly in their accuracy. They usually included some hypothetical and imaginary land features such as islands and mountains.