At the end of the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the United States gained possession of the land of the Northwest Territory, the land south of the Great Lakes and west of the Mississippi River, consisting of the territory that includes Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota. This land was surveyed through an established Public Land System using a rectangular system that worked well for the sale and development of the land. The system divided the land into hundreds of geographical miles square known as townships, which are still present today, and could be further subdivided into lots of one square mile each. 56Ohio and its Public Land System was first inaugurated in 1786, and were personally supervised by Thomas Hutchins, the United States geographer, in an area known as the first Seven Ranges, at a point on the right bank of the Ohio River on the state line between Ohio and Pennsylvania. 57The land lying between the Great and Little Miami Rivers, known as the Garden of America, was purchased by John Cleves Symmes. The 248,540 acres of land, where Cincinnati would be established in 1819, was surveyed by Symmes and his principal surveyor, Israel Ludlow, 58using the same rectangular system established through the prior Seven Ranges surveys. 59S U R V E Y I N A C C U R A C I E S , J O S E P H G E S T , A N D T H E G E S T S T A N D A R DThe limitations of surveying technology and equipment showed during the first half of the 19th century and led to less than one eighth of the world being accurately surveyed. 60Locally, survey shortcomings affected land within the Symmes Purchase. Little attention was paid to the east and west lines due to the rough ground, thick undergrowth, and the carelessness in the chaining, creating uneven measurements of the territory. 61Even more distortions of the meridional lines and longitudes occurred when Symmes ordered his surveyors to carefully rerun the meridian line and set a new standard line to use in establishing the north and south borders. These changes violated the Land Ordinance, which the land was purchased under, and led to many land disputes. 62And, though Symmes used a base line to start his surveys, the natural boundaries of the Ohio and Miami Rivers were ultimately used, which proved to be a defective practice. The Symmes 22