at least one BSA unit, plus annually elected members-at-large who in turn elect the district chairman. Boroughs and districts are subdivisions of the local council and do not have a separate corporate status. History At the time of its incorporation in 1910, and for the first three years of the BSA's existence, local councils were formed by any group of men who felt that a Scouting council was needed in their community. Later, local councils could only be formed by charter. In 1913, the first local council charters were issued to first-class and second-class councils. First class councils were located in America's largest cities at that time: New York City, Boston, Washington DC, and Chicago. Other locations received charters to operate "Area Councils," which served entire states and portions of other states: Philadelphia, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, and various others. At first, local councils were known by names rather than by numbers. The practice of giving a name to a council (e.g., Portland Council in Maine, formed in 1925) continued until Scouting underwent an explosion of interest in the late 1920s/early 1930s, which resulted in a larger number of local councils being formed. BSA records note that more than 100 local councils were formed in 1931 alone. Local councils vary in size, sometimes dramatically. Thatcher Woods Council in the western suburbs of Chicago, for example, consisted of eleven city blocks and a small county forest tract. Santa Ana's Orange County Council is defined by the borders of Orange County and encompasses a large, densely populated urban area. The Katahdin Area Council of north-central Maine consists of nearly 18,000 square miles and represents almost one-third of the population and two-thirds of the land area of the state of Maine; it is the largest council east of the Mississippi River. The Philippines Council encompassed the entire Philippines archipelago, making it one of the few councils that comprised an entire nation. By the end of the 1930s, the BSA had catalogued more than 750 local councils, which made managing and tracking individual "named" councils challenging. In order to better track organizational growth, in the early 1940s the national office undertook a study to determine the best way to manage the myriad councils that now made up the organization. The first phase of the BSA's restructuring occurred in 1945. At first, the nation had been divided into eight districts. That year, the BSA