Our Carolina Curious question this week comes from WFDD listener and self-proclaimed “map nerd” Carolyn Rhode. 

"I have an older map of Alamance County framed in my TV room, and I've often wondered about the townships indicated on the map, why they matter now, and why we still keep track of them today," she says. WFDD's David Ford went in search of the answer.

The history of North Carolina townships goes way back to when the state’s constitution was rewritten post-Civil War during the Reconstruction Period in 1868. It subdivided every county into townships, each with three elected officials: two justices of the peace and a clerk. They regulated roads and bridges and, under the supervision of the county commissioner, managed taxation and property assessment. 

Guilford County Geographic Information Systems Manager Marlena Isely says, back then, in an age before computers, they had to do the best they could to keep up with huge tracts of land — thousands of acres — that were being developed and constantly changing. Townships, she says, fulfilled that role. 

"You have to have a way to track that through deeds and plats and instruments of that nature that are recorded at the register of deeds, but you also have to have a way to map it and be able to visually see it," she says.

Hand-drawn township maps continued for generations. Eventually, though, Isley says the 18 x 24 mylar copies were painstakingly redrawn one by one into computer programs. 

"It's just at your fingertips now and not necessarily embedded in an old mylar somewhere in a cabinet," says Isley. "It's living, and it's breathing, and it's ever evolving and changing now. And that's what I love seeing." 

Today, there are 1,035 townships in North Carolina. They’re known as “nonfunctioning nongovernmental entities” according to the US Census. But the property lines are still used as convenient subdivisions for the state’s 100 counties, and they help organize areas in terms of fire departments, tax collection and school districts.