General Land Office Township Plats Georeferenced

Spatially link General Land Office Township plat images to their relative location on earth to display townships and various natural and cultural entities in Arkansas as they were mapped in the 1800s.

			Through geographic information systems (GIS) research and development, we have spatially geo-referenced and mosaiced scanned images of the original plats for the state of Arkansas to a common coordinate system, being Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) and datum, being North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). A total of 1716 plat images were spatially referenced using township and section corners. In addition to providing these geo-referenced images in a database, we also defined the township extents and clipped the excess overlapping edges of paper, referred to as “collars”. We were able to mosaic these together to provide county and state wide images. This dataset provides 1700+ individual township plats "collar" on and off, a state wide mosaic, and mosaics displaying the 75 counties in Arkansas. The product from this project is intended to serve as a valuable research tool for surveyors, natural resource professionals, historians, and the general public.
            
			

This work was performed by John Tyler Post at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. This project was a joint effort between the Arkansas Commissioner of State Lands, the Arkansas Geographic Information Office, and the School of Forest Resources, University of Arkansas, Monticello.

            

                      We do not guarantee the location accuracy of this dataset. When utilizing the products from this project, the accuracy and other limitations of the two PLSS shape files that were used to spatially reference the plat images need to be taken into account. The plat maps were hand drawn in the 1800s using field notes from surveyors using compass and chain. The plats are almost 200 years old and were scanned to produce an electronic record. This process could have also introduced error. These images were then brought into GIS software where they were warped and transformed to fit onto a Cartesian coordinate system. The measurements found in the original surveyors' field notes take precedence over plat drawings. Users need to keep in mind that any location error that occurred at any stage was compounded throughout this process. This product should not be used to legally define property or any other critical decision making process.Federal and State Law prohibits the looting of archeological sites. This GIS product should not be used for such activity. If anyone is to find anything of archeological significance, they should contact their local archeologist.
      
      

        Extent
        

        

          

            

              
              
              
              
              

                

                  West 
                
-95.618368
                
   East 
                
-89.619987
              
              

                

                  North 
                
37.531952
                
   South 
                
32.969256
              
            
          
        
      

      

        

          Scale Range
        
        

          

            

              
              
              

                

                  Maximum (zoomed in) 
                
1:5,000
              
              

                

                  Minimum (zoomed out) 
                
1:150,000,000