Eastern States Office of External Affairs
| Contacts: | Davida Carnahan | , 703-440-1717 | , dcarnahan@blm.gov |
Historic Minnesota Survey Field Notes Available Online
SPRINGFIELD, Va. – The Bureau of Land Management-Eastern States (BLM-ES) announces that electronic images of all Minnesota field notes created by surveyors for the federal government from 1847, are available on-line at www.glorecords.blm.gov. Minnesota is the first state in the BLM-ES region to have a full set of field notes available online.
Lands in Minnesota have their basis of title in the Public Land Survey System, originally surveyed under Federal authority by the General Land Office (GLO), predecessor to the BLM, and later, by the cadastral surveyors of the BLM. The first field notes in Minnesota were created around 1847, predating opening Minnesota to land sale and to further settlement. The GLO transferred the original field notes to the State of Minnesota on February 4, 1908; the Minnesota Historical Society houses and maintains the set of original field notes. A second original set, known as the “duplicates” of the handwritten notes are housed at the BLM-ES in Springfield, Virginia.
The Minnesota Geospatial Information Office (MnGeo) performed the scanning and the indexing of the original field notes and plats from 1847 to 1911 through a grant provided by the Minnesota Historical Society. The project was supported by a Memorandum of Understanding signed in August 2010 by the BLM-ES, the Minnesota Geospatial Information Office, and the State of Minnesota, to scan and index original survey records in the State of Minnesota. Using BLM software, the MnGeo scanned the original field notes and plats housed at the Minnesota Historical Society. BLM-ES staff completed the Minnesota field note set by collecting the field notes from 1911 to 2012 that are housed at BLM-ES. The original plats scanned by MnGeo will be available online, in the future. The “duplicate” plats housed at BLM-ES are online now.
This year, the BLM commemorates the 200th anniversary of the opening of the GLO on April 25, 1812. Today the BLM-ES provides on-line access to more than four million historical documents, including land patents, survey plats and field notes, land status records and Control Document Index Images.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, recreational and other activities on BLM-managed land contributed more than $130 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 600,000 American jobs. The Bureau is also one of a handful of agencies that collects more revenue than it spends. In FY 2012, nearly $5.7 billion will be generated on lands managed by the BLM, which operates on a $1.1 billion budget. The BLM's multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on public lands.