Working with Scanned Original Plat Maps
ArcView Tip Sheet
November 26, 2001
Background
The State of Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands (BCPL) is responsible for the storage and maintenance of the original land records for the State of Wisconsin (http://bcpl.state.wi.us). The BCPL maintains an acclimatized repository for these records in its Madison office. The repository includes original land patents and certificates, original field surveyors’ notebooks compiled by contract surveyors between 1832 and 1865, and the original plat maps drawn from the surveyors’ notes. Scanned versions of the original plat maps have been created by the BCPL in partnership with the University of Wisconsin, General Library System Collections & Preservation Unit; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and the Federal Bureau of Land Management. The DNR is prohibited from distributing these products to anyone outside of the agency because the software used by BCPL is copyrighted. Others outside of the DNR can purchase the CDs from BCPL, or can request paper copies of the information. In addition to the map images, the BCPL is in the process of imaging the field notes from which the maps were drawn. For more information about scanned original plat maps, contact Rob Nurre by email at or by phone at 608-261-8841.
Data Usage
Water Management Specialists use the original government surveys when reviewing CH. 30 permits for dredging of farmed drainage ditches.
Another comon use is when they are working with NRCS on a wetland restoration project using Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) or Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) funds. Typically, these projects involve putting a ditch plug in a ditch, removing drain tiles or filling in the ditches themselves. Prior stream history is needed to determine if permits will be needed. Perhaps most important is that the landowners that want to restore wetlands on their property may not want the public to access these areas once they are restored. If the ditched waterway on their property has prior stream history NRCS and the landowner cannot restrict the general public from using the public body of water.
Data Availability
Scanned original plat maps are available by county on the Wisconsin Waters Initiative GIS library in the J:\\wtgislib\bcpl_tile folder. It is recommended that the Wisconsin Waters Initiative GIS library be mapped as the J drive to your local computer (see the “Mapping the J and K Drive” handout at http://intranet.dnr.state.wi.us/int/water/wm/dsfm/shore/techtraining/documents/arcview2.pdf ). You may want to copy the data onto a CD or onto your local drive to increase drawing time of the data. The original plat maps in this library are image files in tiff format. The maps are not geo-referenced. Each file represents a PLSS township. The files are stored in folders by county, with the Apostle Islands stored in a separate folder. Each county folder includes a bit map image for the county showing PLSS townships.
File Naming Convention
The file naming convention is 00TTRRDL.tif. The first two digits are 00; the third and fourth digits represent the township number; the fifth and sixth digits represent the range number; the seventh digit represents whether the township is east or west of the prime meridian; and the eight digit represents the page number of the map (A-Z). The first page for any PLSS township is represented with the letter A in the eighth digit and is usually the overall plat map for the area. Subsequent maps for a township generally provide inset maps or additional notes for meanders. For example, the first map available for Adams County is 001406ea.tif.
Displaying Scanned Original Plat Maps
Images can also be viewed in any graphics software program, or inserted into a Word document. However, these images are for DNR use only and should not be distributed to the public.
The images can also be imported into ArcView, but because they are not geo-referenced, they will display on top of one another, therefore preventing the use of an image catalog.