Looking for Old Ownership Maps
We’re looking for old ownership maps, either physical or digital: Tobin maps, Midland Map Company maps, or similar.
They do not need to be current. Our primary need is simply being able to locate a tract when we have an old deed with a metes-and-bounds description but little or no useful information about where the point of beginning is.
We also don’t have a particular county, basin, or state we’re targeting. This comes up with mineral owners who inherit random interests around the country and basically tell us, “I own something somewhere, but I have no idea where it is.”
So, a couple of questions for the group:
- Does anyone know of landmen, brokers, companies, etc. who have old ownership map collections sitting around that they might be willing to sell or otherwise offload?
- Any good sources for digitized historical ownership maps?
- Are there other map publishers/collections we should be looking for besides Tobin and Midland Map Company?
- Any recommendations for third-party services with good historical ownership map coverage?
We’re already looking into providers like Subsurface Library, IFS, Enverus, etc., but I’m sure there are resources out there that I don’t know about.
We’d potentially be interested in buying entire old map collections, even if they’re outdated, incomplete, or cover areas we don’t currently have a need for.
Thanks for any leads or recommendations!