Township (United States)

The northern and westernmost tier of sections in each township are designed to take up the convergence of the east and west township boundary lines or range lines, as well as any error in the survey measurements, and therefore these sections vary slightly from being one square mile or 640 acres (260 ha).

Survey townships exist in some form in most states other than the original Thirteen Colonies, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vermont, and Maine.

In Kentucky, the Jackson Purchase (the area west of the Tennessee River) is divided into townships and ranges.

In extreme northern Maine there is an area divided into townships and ranges oriented to true north.

A region in the central part of the state, made up of 17 surveys, is divided into townships, but these are not oriented to true north.

Sizeable portions of Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, are unsurveyed.

The most common governmental responsibilities of townships include oversight of such things as road maintenance, land-use planning, and trash collection.

A New Jersey township differs only in name from other municipalities: its boundaries are fixed, it is an incorporated body, and it is free to adopt another form of government.

Charter townships may also reorganize themselves into municipalities, as can be seen in Wayne County, Michigan, and elsewhere in the Detroit metropolitan area.

Towns and townships are sometimes considered minor civil divisions of counties by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes.

[4] According to the Census Bureau, in 2002, town or township government applied to 16,504 organized governments in the following 20 states: This categorization includes governmental units officially designated as "towns" in the New England states, New York, and Wisconsin, some plantations in Maine and locations in New Hampshire.

Although towns in the six New England states and New York, and townships in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, are legally termed municipal corporations, perform municipal-type functions, and frequently serve densely populated urban areas, they have no necessary relation to concentration of population, and are thus counted for census purposes as town or township governments.