Administrative level of townships in Maine

Communities United States
13

I think there are multiple similar-sounding concepts that we need to distinguish:

  • Survey townships – systematically named, used in legal property descriptions, maybe mappable but definitely not administrative
  • Townships – unorganized by definition, distinctively named, often correspond to survey townships but not always, used as a point of reference for some government services, mappable as administrative boundaries with admin_level=8 but currently tagged admin_level=9
  • Unorganized territories (UTs, plural) – the Census Bureau’s automatic grouping of adjacent townships for statistical purposes, analogous to CCDs in some other states, only as mappable as CDPs, but definitely not administrative
  • Unorganized Territory (the UT, singular) – the state’s designation for all the townships and unincorporated islands collectively, conceivably mappable as a single administrative boundary with admin_level=7
1 Like