But whatever the case, whenever possible, OSM prefers on-the-ground knowledge to simply copying from an existing map. In iD, press W to toggle wireframe mode.įinally, you may be able to convince your county's engineer's office to let OSM copy the township lines from their official road map. For example, if you use Potlatch 2, press D to make OSM features translucent you can also turn on the 'Show floating window' option in the Layers menu for a side-by-side display. Some editors have features that make it easy to see the topo layer at the same time you edit features on top of it. If you know the general vicinity of a township line, you may also be able to spot a change in pavement quality where one township has repaved their road up to the township line. It helps to switch back to aerial photography once in awhile, as a sanity check. Note that the topo layer can be slightly misaligned in places. They can be hard to spot, especially where they are overlaid on roads and creeks, so it helps to keep the above observations in mind. Township boundaries are generally shown as black dashed lines. This layer displays a bunch of public domain topographic maps from the USGS laid out side-by-side. Now fire up your favorite editor and switch to the USGS Topographic Maps layer. For example, the smallest of rivers often serve as township lines because they were significant obstacles back when it took awhile to get to the nearest bridge. In counties surveyed using the older metes and bounds method, such as in the Virginia Military District, the first step is often to identify prominent natural features that might have served as an obvious township line in the past, then go out and see whether there's a township welcome sign anywhere near there.Even where there aren't roads, you can still make out different farms along these lines. In counties surveyed under the Public Land Survey System, or in the Connecticut Western Reserve, aerial imagery often shows prominent roads that run through the county in a roughly 5–6 mile grid.The first step in mapping a township boundary depends on the part of the state: Note that the townships described on this page are civil townships, even though in Ohio they almost always correspond to survey townships. That data is often quite inaccurate anyways, so it's up to us to draw the townships by hand. Inexplicably, township lines were entirely omitted from the TIGER import, even though TIGER has extensive township border data.

Map of liberty township ohio