Civil townships are minor civil divisions with established governments and should NOT be confused with Public Land Survey System (PLSS) townships. PLSS townships DO NOT have given names. Civil townships, as mentioned previously are governmental entities established by the residents of that township. They can have town boards, town assessors, town clerks, their own maintained roads, etc. They are essentially a governmental sub-division of a county. Many times these townships correspond with PLSS townships. Many times they don’t. For example, there are civil townships in Golden Valley County, North Dakota that cover 4 PLSS townships (i.e., 144 sections). There is one civil township in Ransom County that covers one complete PLSS township, and half (18 sections) of the PLSS township to the south. Most, if not all, of these townships have established names such as the Town of Almond, or the Town of Rose, or the Town of Rome. There are also many areas that are unorganized, meaning that no civil township government structure is in place. There may have been one there at one time, but maybe the residents chose to disband their local government, or maybe the population could no longer support it. Or maybe one was never formed. In either of these cases, the county usually takes over the local governmental issues