
Most of the maps in this collection are hand drawn made by surveyors hired by the United States General Land Office scans of which are made available from the Bureau of Land Management and the University of Oregon. They were originally made to document the land claims made by settlers to this region. Though they can vary in detail, they are a rich cartographic resource showing the location of homesteads, roads, buildings and land forms. The majority of the maps date from 1852-1910 (a handful of maps are later).
The easiest way to access the maps is to use the map viewer provided by the BLM:
http://www.blm.gov/or/landrecords/survey/yGrdOr_A.php?ln=1000000
Step 1: Click inside the grid square on the map for the location you are interested in.
Step 2: Select a maps from the section “Survey Plats”. The date of the map is in third column.
Step 3: Click in the link to open a high resolution scan of the map.
Note: A modern “base map” of the section and the scans of the original field notes can also be viewed and uploaded.
A more simplified site is provided by U of O (https://library.uoregon.edu/map/GIS/Data/Oregon/GLO/index.html ) which is easy to use if the township section number is already known.