Hurricane Rita: a photo journal

[Tonchi]

Originally Posted by plthijinx

your guess is as good as mine. that's why i was asking, maybe they are. it makes sense.....

I'm nearly positive those are Sections of 4 Quarters. This land was probably divided for sale or granting back in the mid 1800's. Most of the land West of the Mississippi is surveyed and title given that way since the Homestead Act 140 years ago, but the article at the link below says Texas went by old land grants except in the panhandle, so this might be a more recent partitioning. People tended to clear a road of sorts all the way around their square quarter, which is why in ranching country nowdays you find paved roads that run for miles straight as an arrow and suddenly make a 90-degree turn; it's because the road reached a corner of the original holdings. Those regular squared fields you see from the air in Kansas and Missouri are composed of quarters too, and that is why they are so perfectly sharp-cornered. It's very possible those are fields in your photograph, but the reason they are shaped like that is the Homestead Act. I suspect the boundaries are flooded, which gives the impression of roads from reflections on the water.

http://www.uta.edu/paleomap/geol1435/township.htm