As new territory was added to the growing United States of America in the mid-1800s, public lands were officially recorded through a process of survey that mapped sections of land into one-mile square parcels, each containing 640 acres. When Congress created the Idaho Territory in 1863, in the midst of the U.S. Civil War, it originally included parts of what are today the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Because President Lincoln and Congress were concerned with other pressing matters, some of the administrative support to the new Idaho Territory…
