As more and more people came to the New World, vast territories had been opened up for settlement. The U.S Government needed a way to manage all this land. And thus, the Land Ordinance of 1785 was passed, which resulted in the creation of the PLSS.
The PLSS, or Public Land Survey System, divided all federal land into 6x6 mile blocks called "townships". These were further divided into 36 "sections", each 1 square mile, or 640 acres.
This system of organization proved to be effective during the Homestead Act, which granted each settler a minimum of 160 acres, or 1/4th of a section. The land that the government had acquired was divided into square plots to be given out according to this system. As time passed, almost every other state that was admitted into the Union afterwards started adopting it, with the exception of Texas. This is because Texas was surveyed based on the Spanish land grant boundaries, along with Spanish units of measurement called "varas". (After Texas gained their independence, they continued to use parts of this system.) The PLSS is even is even partially responsible for creating the straighter borders of western states.
However, the PLSS has its fair share of problems. An obvious one is human error, and not every square is uniform and exactly the same shape and size. They were sometimes marked with wooden stakes and piles of rocks, which are primitive and non permanent.
Some areas were just simply never surveyed and assigned sections. (called "unplatted" land). This is because the surveyors thought the land was so rugged and unfit for settlement that no one would want them anyways, and it results in legal complications to this day.
So why do we still use a 200 year old system to survey our land, when we have things like GPS satellites and Google Maps? The simple answer is because we've been using this system for so long that it's unreasonable to change. Roads, property, and even county lines have been aligned to this system, and moving from the PLSS would have a ripple effect on everything else. But we use these modern technologies to help us survey the unplattered land that we didn't do hundreds of years ago.
In conclusion, the PLSS is here to stay. It's more than just a way to survey land; it literally helped draw out America as we know it. An example of this can be seen below:
This is a screenshot I took while randomly scrolling into the Midwest on Google Maps, near Kanawha, IA. At first it seems like just a bunch of squares. However, what I found interesting is that all of these squares formed by the roads are about 1 mile by 1 mile, and all align exactly with PLSS sections. That means that these squares are likely the same parcels of land that were divided up and given to settlers during the Homestead Act of 1862! In addition, the highways 17 and 111 on this map also align with the PLSS, and 17 also serves as a county line, dividing Hancock and Kossuth counties. Zoom into almost any Midwestern sate, and you will see this same grid pattern. It's history from space!
Sources
https://nationalmap.gov/small_scale/a_plss.html
https://www.gislounge.com/what-is-the-public-land-survey-and-why-do-we-still-use-it/
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.8884872,-93.9488077,13903m/data=!3m1!1e3 - Location of screenshot
https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/advanced-viewer/ - PLSS map overlay
Wow, I never knew that the US still uses the PLSS system, despite the fact that it is so important and that it dictates a lot of our borders and land division. If a change were to be implemented to this multi century old system, what could be fixed or made better that the current PLSS system lacks?
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