Maine also has some unorganized townships that were once organized as plantations. All three of the northern New England states also include at least one unorganized township that was once a town but has disincorporated and reverted to unorganized territory, generally due to population loss. All three of the northern New England states (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) contain some areas that are unincorporated and unorganized, not part of any town, city or plantation. In all cases, the city was originally the "town center" of the town, but later incorporated as a city and became a separate municipality. The above process has created several instances where there are adjacent towns and cities with the same name. In Vermont, if a village becomes a city, it does not continue to overlay its parent town, but breaks away and becomes a casino gamespot completely separate municipality. Two of the New England states do have general-purpose municipalities of this type, however, to at least a limited extent.
Unlike the land to the east, most of the land west of the Mississippi River was under French or Spanish rule until the first years of the 19th century. It includes formally organized territories, proposed and failed states, unrecognized breakaway states, international and interstate purchases, cessions, and land grants, and historical military departments and administrative districts. Townships in Pennsylvania were created in the 17th century during the colonial-era Province of Pennsylvania prior to the American Revolution. There is no unincorporated territory, but, as in all New England states, there are a fair number of unincorporated, named communities that lie within the incorporated territory of a municipality. Because the primary role of CDPs is to establish "place" data for communities located in unincorporated areas, a CDP cannot be within an incorporated place. In cases where a town is entirely or almost entirely built-up, the Census sometimes recognizes a CDP which is coextensive with the entire town. While these were not large communities, they were large enough to realistically operate a town government if they wanted to, but simply elected not to. In addition to towns and cities, Maine has a third type of town-like municipality not found in any other New England state, the plantation.
The territory was divided into eight council districts and 19 representative districts. In addition the eastern boundary was located about 2.7 miles (4.3 km) farther east at the 102nd meridian west, and the western boundary about 50 miles (80 km) farther west at the 110th meridian west. The proposed Territory of Jefferson included all of the present State of Colorado, but it was 70 percent more extensive. A desire for a new territorial government kept the elected officials from taking their offices, as doing so would have given recognition to the Kansas Territorial government. The question of whether to admit Kansas to the union as a slave state or free state dominated discussion in the populous eastern portion of the territory and led to three failed constitutional proposals between 1855 and 1858 (the Topeka, Lecompton and Leavenworth constitutions). The government of the Jefferson Territory, while democratically elected, was never legally recognized by the United States government, although it managed the territory with relatively free rein for 19 months. The Jefferson Territory included all of the present State of Colorado and portions of the present states of Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming.
Historical development
Belts are loosely defined sub-regions found throughout the United States that are named for a perceived commonality among the included areas, which is often related to the region's economy or climate. These are functioning governments created as a result of the attempted secession of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Civilian administered "military" tracts, districts, departments, etc., will be listed elsewhere. These entities were sometimes the only governmental authority in the listed areas, although they often co-existed with civil governments in scarcely populated states and territories. Other elected officials include a tax collector and, in many townships, a panel of three auditors who annually audit all township accounts. Between five and fifteen commissioners sit on this panel; they can be elected either at large or by wards within the township; and they serve for overlapping terms of four years in office. Townships of the second class are governed by a board of supervisors, elected at large by the electorate of the whole township for overlapping six-year terms. Historically, this progression has often included border adjustments or mergers with other boroughs or townships.
In Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, almost every city has at least 10,000 people, and all but a few have at least 20,000. In common speech, people often generically refer to communities of either type as "towns", drawing no distinction between the two. Jefferson Township is bordered by Lincoln Township to the northeast, Somerset Township to the east, Milford Township to the southeast, Middlecreek Township to the southwest, and Westmoreland County to the northwest. The territory was created during the onset of the American Civil War in the wake of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush, which brought the first large concentration of settlers from the east to the region. Jefferson County's communities included four organized towns and other area settlements. The gold rush brought 100,000 gold seekers to the area known as the Pike's Peak Country, which included Arapahoe County as well as the unorganized southwestern corner of the Nebraska Territory and parts of the New Mexico and Utah territories. On August 25, 1855, the Kansas Territory created Arapahoe County, a huge county that included the entire western portion of Kansas to the Rocky Mountains. The people were desirous of a closer government than those five territories provided.
In addition, Maine also has a unique type of entity called a plantation. Towns are the basic building block of the New England municipality system, although several other types of municipalities also exist. Formation of new towns in this manner slowed in the later part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, however. By 1850, the only New England state that still had large unincorporated areas was Maine; by the end of the 19th century, most areas in Maine that could realistically be settled had been organized into towns. The entire land areas of Connecticut and Rhode Island had been divided into towns by the late 18th century, and Massachusetts was almost completely covered early in the 19th century. Towns originally were the only form of incorporated municipality in New England. Municipalities and communities of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, United States
As of the 2020 census, Maine contains 485 organized municipalities, of which 23 are incorporated as cities, 430 are incorporated as towns, and the remaining 32 are organized as plantations. In Maine, it seems, due to the extent of unorganized area, the Census Bureau typically lumps contiguous townships, gores, and the like together into larger units called "unorganized territories" (UTs), which are then treated as MCDs. At the same time, not all built-up places with significant populations are recognized as CDPs. To fill in some of the "place" data, the Census Bureau sometimes recognizes census-designated places (CDPs) within New England towns. The rationale behind this is that cities are likely to be more thoroughly built-up and therefore more readily comparable to cities in other states than towns are. The census bureau did uniquely recognize towns, however, in that it formerly classified metropolitan areas in New England on the basis of town boundaries rather than county boundaries as it does in other parts of the U.S.