Stevens County, Washington Genealogy: Difference between revisions

==== Land ==== Original homestead records are available at the Bureau of Land Management [http://www.glorecords.blm.gov|Official Federal Land Records Website]. The first general land office patent listed on this website was granted May 1884.<br> To view a Township, Range, Section map within Stevens County *Go to the [http://www.co.stevens.wa.us/assessor/assessor.htm Stevens County Assessor's website] *Look for Parcel Information on Assessor's/Treasurer's Site" and click on it. You will be asked to agree to the terms of use, click on "I Agree" at least twice when first using this feature. *Where it states "Choose a Search Path" you have four choices: Parcel Search, Legal Search, Address Search, and Mapsifter. You can try a current address, but the names of most roads in the county have changed over the years, which reduces your possibility of success. A Legal Search is your best bet for earlier records. *Choose Legal Search from the dropdown. *In the box marked Township, Range, Section type those three pairs of numbers without a hyphen (example 363711). <br>*In the example 362711, you will get two choices, click on the parcel number for the first choice. A new feature called Mapsifter has been added. This uses Microsoft's Silverlight imaging. If you haven't used Silverlight on your computer, you need to download a file to do so. Once you zoom in close enough to see the blue lines indicating property lines, you can easily find the parcel you are looking for. If you aren't sure of the specific Township/Range, Parcel number, or legal description, click on the Mapsifter tab and it will call up a map of the county. Click on it and then either use your mouse or the control device on the bottom right to zoom and move about the map. These records are current to five years back and provide a lot of detail about the property and current owners. [http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/ Bureau of Land Managment General Land Records Office] has an explanation of the township/range system, as does [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System Wikipedia],&nbsp;as well as Family Search Wiki. The BLM also has Cadastral and other survey information at [http://www.blm.gov/or/landrecords/survey/ySrvy1.php Oregon and Washington Land Status and Cadastral Record], please note this is separate from the survey dropdown on the main glorecords.blm.gov page.&nbsp; To aid in your search, the northwest corner of the county is in Township 40 Range 36; the northeast corner is township 40 range 42; the southwest corner is&nbsp;township 28 range 35; and the southeast corner is in township 27 range 42. Per the records clerk at the [http://www.blm.gov/or/districts/spokane/index.php BLM Spokane Office (Fancher Road)] they have NARA microfilms of the railroad land transactions for their assigned area to include Stevens County. If you have the latitude and longitude of the location you are looking for, you can convert it to township/range using the converter at [http://www.earthpoint.us/Townships.aspx Earthpoint].