Public notice
Original PLS field notes online

Description: Minnesota’s scanned public land survey field notes are online at the U.S. BLM’s General Land Office website
Date: July 13, 2012
Subject(s): Geographic information systems
Creator(s): Minnesota Department of Administration; Minnesota Department of Administration. Geographic and Demographic Analyis Division. Minnesota Geospatial Information Office
Contributor: Nancy Rader
Publisher: Minnesota Department of Administration. Geographic and Demographic Analyis Division. Minnesota Geospatial Information Office

Minnesota’s original survey notes – all 308,000 pages – are now online at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) General Land Office website.

Work yet to be completed by BLM:

  • Incorporating Minnesota’s high-resolution (600 dpi) GLO plats into the site. The plats which currently appear on the site are BLM’s duplicates which may differ from the originals scanned in Minnesota in 2004. For now, download the GLO plats, including geo-referenced versions, via MnGeo’s GLO Plats website.
  • Modifying BLM's land records database to accommodate multiple survey records per GLO plat. In those instances when multiple records exist for a plat, there currently are no links to a map (BLM’s or Minnesota's).
BLM has not yet set a date for completing these final steps.

This is the near culmination of a great deal of work by MnGeo and MnDOT staff. The project to scan and distribute Minnesota’s General Land Office (GLO) field notes, described on the project website, was funded by a Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage grant awarded to MnGeo by the Minnesota Historical Society.


Alternative resource record formats: XML | MARC record (for inclusion in library catalogs)