Wisconsin Land Ownership Map & Plat Book Index
In the late 19th century, land ownership maps and plat books began to be published throughout the United States.
In the late 19th century, land ownership maps and plat books began to be published throughout the United States. Most often created by private companies, these resources show the names of individual owners of land parcels. Land ownership maps and plat books are useful to genealogists, house historians, surveyors, and environmental researchers.
The Milwaukee Public Library has an extensive collection of plat books and maps showing property ownership for the entire state of Wisconsin. These land ownership books and maps range from 1858 until the present. While the library’s collection includes all of the state’s seventy-two counties, not every county is represented in every year.
This index lists the Wisconsin land ownership map and plat book holdings that are part of the library’s collection. The index is arranged alphabetically by name of county. Click the web link for each county to view the CountyCat catalog record. Note: Milwaukee County and Wisconsin (statewide) have links to multiple catalog records arranged by year(s) of publication.
All of the Wisconsin land ownership maps and plat books are kept in the Frank P. Zeidler Humanities Room, located on the second floor of Central Library. These items are for reference use only and cannot be checked out of the library. Please call the Humanities Department at (414) 286-3061 with any questions about the collection.
NEW as of 12/20/2024! Where available, counties in this index show availability of "Family Maps of..." titles, which are related resources to plat maps.
Family Maps series volumes contain newly created maps of each represented county, gleaned from the indexes of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Patent maps are essentially plat maps but instead of depicting owners for a particular year, these maps show original landowners, no matter when the transfer from the federal government was completed. Dates of patents typically begin near the time of statehood and run into the early 1900s.