American Boundaries

"Americans identify with and feel strong ties to particular places--suburban homesites, historic farms and ranches, national parks, and states. Each of those places receives its definition from borders and boundaries produced by a historical process, astonishing in its scale and enterprise, of determining and drawing lines on the land. In a remarkable work of synthesis and reflection, Bill Hubbard guides us through this wildly complicated story with both clarity and enthusiasm. Reading this book--and just as important, pondering its many maps and illustrations--gives both residents of and visitors to the opportunity to escape the temptation to take our current arrangements for granted and, instead, to contemplate the choices and decisions that literally laid out the terms of our lives on the land."

"For all of us who are fascinated by America's political geography--with its odd mixture of straight lines, right angles, and quirky panhandles--American Boundaries is the closest thing we have to a definitive treatment of this essential but oft-neglected subject. It answers more questions about our literal political landscape than even scholars can ask. And it is also a labor of love, a tribute to the fine art of surveying that subjected woodlands, mountains, and fruited plains to the mathematical discipline of the rectangular survey."

"John McPhee exposed the geological story under our country's diverse ecological regions. Bill Hubbard, in his book American Boundaries, reveals in his detailed history of the American Rectangular Survey the political maneuverings, technological inventions, mathematical problems, environmental situations, and cultural conflict involved in the conversion of the wilderness geology to a productive democratic urban landscape for a fast-growing nation. As our nation faces the tasks of civilizing metropolitan suburban sprawl and taking measure of the realities of global climate change, we need to address the issues of setting the next new public domain boundaries. Whatever the final form, Hubbard's book reminds us that the future of a vital nation is tied to how we as a country set out 'fair' boundaries that unite us into communities rather than subdividing land into a segregated society."