After the War of 1812, the United State Congress proposed two million acres of military bounty land for the Michigan Territory. To survey the land, the meridian first had to be established. U.S. Surveyor General Edward Tiffin created the meridian based on the western line of the Treaty of Detroit (1807). In April 1815, he contracted with Deputy Surveyor Benjamin Hough to begin the survey for $3 per mile. Taking a reading from Polaris, the North Star, Hough, Alexander Holmes, and 11 crew members surveyed the line due north from Fort Defiance. The difficult terrain they encountered temporarily halted all surveys in the territory and ultimately led to the bounty land being transferred to the Illinois and Missouri Territories.