Willamette Meridian

Just a few miles west of downtown Portland, two lines intersect to form the origin—or initial point—of a grid system by which all lands in Washington and Oregon are divided, surveyed, and recorded. A baseline running east-west extends from the Pacific Ocean to the Idaho border. The north-south axis—the Willamette Meridian—crosses the Columbia River just upstream from Kelley Point Park. The Treaty of Paris of 1803, which ended the Revolutionary War, and the ceding of the original 13 colonies’ western lands between 1780 and 1802 left the U.S. government with an enormous amount of land to keep track of and dispose of. The Land Ordinance of 1785 established a system for inventorying the public domain. This Rectangular Survey System, or Public Land Survey System, is used for most of the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains. The grid creates a pattern of squares known as townships, which are in turn divided into 36 one-square-mile sections. As the nation expanded, new points of origin for this system were added. John B. Preston, the first Surveyor General of Oregon, established the Willamette Stone as the Willamette Meridian’s initial point in Portland’s west hills in 1851. Today the Willamette Stone State Park marks the location with a commemorative plaque and a brass surveyor’s benchmark.