Surveys

The BCPL archive is entrusted with the original field notes of the Public Land Survey of Wisconsin conducted by the federal General Land Office between 1832 and 1866. These detailed, on-the-ground surveys established the township, range, and section grid upon which all legal land descriptions in the State are based.

The original survey field notes and resurvey maps have been digitized. In the 2007-09 biennium, we were able to scan, index and make available over the Internet more than 400 resurvey maps. These resurvey maps join our collection of over 1500 original survey maps and more than 650 volumes of handwritten survey field notes. BCPL has worked with UW Digital Collections to rescan all plat maps at a higher resolution with significantly improved image quality. The rescanned images have been released with a new search interface that will include map based searching capabilities. New scans became available during summer 2026.

Before beginning a search for survey records, users are strongly encouraged to read the surveys background material. This information has been developed to assist in understanding the process of the public land survey and how to interpret the records, as well as to understand the search techniques for this site. Much of the credit for this project is due to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, General Library System. This organization did the original imaging of the field notes, as well as the developing and hosting of the search website and images.