General Survey Act

The General Survey Act was a United States law, signed on April 30, 1824, authorizing the president to employ military and civil engineers to survey, plan, and estimate routes for roads and canals of national importance. The War Department executed the statute through the Board of Engineers for Internal Improvements (formed May 31, 1824). The Act authorized surveys, plans, and estimates, not federal construction, and administrative instructions sometimes directed comparative studies that included railway alternatives when evaluating “roads.”

In the same month as the Act, Congress separately appropriated $75,000 to clear obstructions on the Ohio–Mississippi system, initiating federal river-improvement work.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.