EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio — Some say that the American West begins at West Virginia, specifically at the tip of its northern panhandle, and there’s a quantifiable reason to support that claim.
Somewhere beneath the Ohio River, on what was the river’s north bank in 1786, Thomas Hutchens established what’s now called the Point of Beginning, after which most lands to the west have since been mapped.
The Township-and-Range System, or Rectangular Survey System, commenced west of a stake that marked the northern extent of the boundary between Pennsylvania and Virginia, now West Virginia.
The system was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey the land ceded to the U.S. by the Treaty of Paris after the end of the American Revolution, and it’s been used since as the primary method for recording claims to land…