Minnesota's original public land survey plat maps were created between 1848 and 1907 during the first government land survey of the state by the U.S. Surveyor General's Office. This collection of more than 3,600 maps includes later General Land Office (GLO) and Bureau of Land Management maps up through 2001. Scanned images of the maps are available in several digital formats and most have been georeferenced.
The survey plat maps, and the accompanying survey field notes, serve as the fundamental legal records for real estate in Minnesota; all property titles and descriptions stem from them. They also are an essential resource for surveyors and provide a record of the state's physical geography prior to European settlement. Finally, they testify to many years of hard work by the surveying community, often under very challenging conditions.
The deteriorating physical condition of the older maps (drawn on paper, linen, and other similar materials) and the need to provide wider public access to the maps, made handling the original records increasingly impractical. To meet this challenge, the Office of the Secretary of State (SOS), the State Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), MnGeo and the Minnesota Association of County Surveyors collaborated in a digitization project which produced high quality (800 dpi), 24-bit color images of the maps in standard TIFF, JPEG and PDF formats - nearly 1.5 terabytes of data. Funding was provided by MnDOT.
In 2010-11, most of the JPEG plat map images were georeferenced. The intent was to locate the plat images to coincide with statewide geographic data without appreciably altering (warping) the image. This increases the value of the images in mapping software where they can be used as a background layer.
This dataset contains polygons representing individual taxed parcels or individual tax-exempt parcels tracked for taxing purposes. It also contains polygons representing the locations of multiple tax properties. In the case of multiple tax properties, several parcel polygons may be stacked on top of one another. These are multiple tax parcels that cannot be delineated on a two-dimensional map, including both taxed and tax-exempt parcels. The parcels are represented with identical geometries but have different parcel IDs and associated tax attributes. The PID field contains the property ID number for each parcel.Link to Attribute Table Information: http://gis.hennepin.us/OpenData/Metadata/County%20Tax%20Parcels.pdf
© This dataset is compiled monthly by the Hennepin County GIS Office from parcel geometry that is created and maintained by the Hennepin County Resident and Real Estate Services Survey Division and tax attributes extracted from the Hennepin County Real Estate Services property tax information system.
This data set features polygons that represent tax parcels in Aitkin County, Minnesota. Polygons are identified by Parcel Identification Number (PIN). Polygons were mapped using the legal description on file in the Recorder's Office. Redundant geometries exist for condomimiums and undivided interests. Undivided ownership occurs when two or more parties have an ownership interest in the same parcel.
Washington County, MN Tax Parcels. An independent manual check of the parcel data was made at the time of its initial development whereby all geo-coded parcel legal descriptions in a PLSS section were reinterpreted and examined for accuracy and completeness on the hard copy check plot. As each new plat or lot division occurs, a similar process is repeated for the new additions during the maintenance period. Multiple lines of ownership indicating ambiguity in property line location are merged into a single line if falling within 3 feet of each other. Gaps or overlaps in these situations are not shown. In some cases where two lines converge; e.g., where at one end the two lot lines are within 0.50 feet of each other and at the other end they are within 6.00 feet of each other they may be merged because the average discrepancy is 3 feet or less. Where gaps or overlaps exist in excess of approximately 3 feet in width, they are shown with text notation indicating APPARENT GAP or AREA OF DISCREPANCY.
DCGIS is an interactive map that provides increased functionality for advanced users as well as access to about 150 layers of GIS data, including parcel information, contour lines, aerial photography, county park amenities, park trails, bikeways, county road construction, roundabouts, floodplains and more. It allows you to create a map at any scale you wish.
The Interactive GIS Map is intended for use on any device - mobile or desktop - with high speed access.
Vector polygon map data of property parcels from Itasca County, Minnesota containing 77967 features.
Property parcel GIS map data consists of detailed information about individual land parcels, including their boundaries, ownership details, and geographic coordinates.
Property parcel data can be used to analyze and visualize land-related information for purposes such as real estate assessment, urban planning, or environmental management.
Available for viewing and sharing as a map in a Koordinates map viewer. This data is also available for export to DWG for CAD, PDF, KML, CSV, and GIS data formats, including Shapefile, MapInfo, and Geodatabase.
This dataset includes high quality (800 Dots Per Inch - DPI), 24 bit color images of Minnesota's original Public Land Survey (PLS) plats created during the first government land survey of the state from 1848 to 1907. Currently housed at the Office of the Secretary of State, these plats were created by the U.S. Surveyor General's Office. This collection of more than 3,600 maps also includes later General Land Office (GLO) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) maps - up to the year 2001.
Minnesota's survey plat maps serve as the fundamental legal records for real estate in the state; all property titles and descriptions stem from them. They also serve as an essential resource for surveyors and as an analytical tool for the state's physical geography prior to European settlement. Finally, they serve as a testimony to years and years of hard work by the surveying community, often under challenging conditions.
In recent years the deteriorating physical condition of the older maps and the needs of technologically more sophisticated researchers, who require access to the maps, have made handling the original paper records increasingly less practical. To meet this challenge, the Office of the Secretary of State, the State Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, MnGeo (formerly the Land Management Information Center - LMIC) and the Minnesota Association of County Surveyors collaborated in a digitization project which produced images of the maps in standard TIFF, JPEG and PDF formats - nearly 1.5 terabytes worth of data. Funding was provided by the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
Scott County Parcels represent property tax boundaries and were created, and are maintained, by the Survey department. The tax boundaries are joined to the Assessor's CAMA data using the PID field providing field attributes for each property. For a list of field descriptions, click here.
description: The TRSQ digital data set represents the Township, Range, Section, Quarter section, and Quarter-quarter section divisions of the state. Beginning in the late 1840s, the federal government began surveying Minnesota as part of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). The resulting network of land survey lines divided the state into townships, ranges, sections, quarter sections, quarter-quarter sections and government lots, and laid the groundwork for contemporary land ownership patterns. The quarter-quarter section remains an important subdivision for rural Minnesota since these lines are used to define local boundaries, roads, and service areas. All survey lines were extended across water bodies despite the fact that U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) base maps depict them only on land. This addition allows all sections and townships to be represented as closed areas ensuring that township and range location can be determined for any point in the state. It also means that the data is not affected if lake levels change over time. The township, range and section boundaries were digitized at MnGeo (formerly the Land Management Information Center - LMIC) from the USGS 30' x 60' map series (1:100,000-scale). Quarter section and quarter-quarter section subdivisions were calculated using the section lines. They were not digitized from original plat book survey lines or from the meandered lines that surveyors laid out around water bodies. The existence of government lots within a quarter-quarter section is recorded in the data set; however, the government lot boundaries were not digitized. If a quarter-quarter section contains more than one government lot, the number of lots is recorded -- see Lineage, Section 2, for more detail. Note: For most uses, TRSQ has been superseded by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) 1:24,000-scale 'Control Point Generated PLS' data set which is free online. See https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/plan-mndnr-public-land-survey for more information. Also, many county surveyors offices have more accurate PLS (Public Land Survey) data sets. For county webpages and contact information, see http://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/cty_contacts.html .; abstract: The TRSQ digital data set represents the Township, Range, Section, Quarter section, and Quarter-quarter section divisions of the state. Beginning in the late 1840s, the federal government began surveying Minnesota as part of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). The resulting network of land survey lines divided the state into townships, ranges, sections, quarter sections, quarter-quarter sections and government lots, and laid the groundwork for contemporary land ownership patterns. The quarter-quarter section remains an important subdivision for rural Minnesota since these lines are used to define local boundaries, roads, and service areas. All survey lines were extended across water bodies despite the fact that U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) base maps depict them only on land. This addition allows all sections and townships to be represented as closed areas ensuring that township and range location can be determined for any point in the state. It also means that the data is not affected if lake levels change over time. The township, range and section boundaries were digitized at MnGeo (formerly the Land Management Information Center - LMIC) from the USGS 30' x 60' map series (1:100,000-scale). Quarter section and quarter-quarter section subdivisions were calculated using the section lines. They were not digitized from original plat book survey lines or from the meandered lines that surveyors laid out around water bodies. The existence of government lots within a quarter-quarter section is recorded in the data set; however, the government lot boundaries were not digitized. If a quarter-quarter section contains more than one government lot, the number of lots is recorded -- see Lineage, Section 2, for more detail. Note: For most uses, TRSQ has been superseded by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) 1:24,000-scale 'Control Point Generated PLS' data set which is free online. See https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/plan-mndnr-public-land-survey for more information. Also, many county surveyors offices have more accurate PLS (Public Land Survey) data sets. For county webpages and contact information, see http://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/cty_contacts.html .
This dataset is a compilation of county parcel data from Minnesota counties that have opted-in for their parcel data to be included in this dataset.
It includes the following 55 counties that have opted-in as of the publication date of this dataset: Aitkin, Anoka, Becker, Benton, Big Stone, Carlton, Carver, Cass, Chippewa, Chisago, Clay, Clearwater, Cook, Crow Wing, Dakota, Douglas, Fillmore, Grant, Hennepin, Houston, Isanti, Itasca, Jackson, Koochiching, Lac qui Parle, Lake, Lyon, Marshall, McLeod, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Mower, Murray, Norman, Olmsted, Otter Tail, Pennington, Pipestone, Polk, Pope, Ramsey, Renville, Rice, Saint Louis, Scott, Sherburne, Stearns, Stevens, Traverse, Waseca, Washington, Wilkin, Winona, Wright, and Yellow Medicine.
If you represent a county not included in this dataset and would like to opt-in, please contact Heather Albrecht (Heather.Albrecht@hennepin.us), co-chair of the Minnesota Geospatial Advisory Council (GAC)’s Parcels and Land Records Committee's Open Data Subcommittee. County parcel data does not need to be in the GAC parcel data standard to be included. MnGeo will map the county fields to the GAC standard.
County parcel data records have been assembled into a single dataset with a common coordinate system (UTM Zone 15) and common attribute schema. The county parcel data attributes have been mapped to the GAC parcel data standard for Minnesota: https://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/committee/standards/parcel_attrib/parcel_attrib.html
This compiled parcel dataset was created using Python code developed by Minnesota state agency GIS professionals, and represents a best effort to map individual county source file attributes into the common attribute schema of the GAC parcel data standard. The attributes from counties are mapped to the most appropriate destination column. In some cases, the county source files included attributes that were not mapped to the GAC standard. Additionally, some county attribute fields were parsed and mapped to multiple GAC standard fields, such as a single line address. Each quarter, MnGeo provides a text file to counties that shows how county fields are mapped to the GAC standard. Additionally, this text file shows the fields that are not mapped to the standard and those that are parsed. If a county shares changes to how their data should be mapped, MnGeo updates the compilation. If you represent a county and would like to update how MnGeo is mapping your county attribute fields to this compiled dataset, please contact us.
This dataset is a snapshot of parcel data, and the source date of the county data may vary. Users should consult County websites to see the most up-to-date and complete parcel data.
There have been recent changes in date/time fields, and their processing, introduced by our software vendor. In some cases, this has resulted in date fields being empty. We are aware of the issue and are working to correct it for future parcel data releases.
The State of Minnesota makes no representation or warranties, express or implied, with respect to the use or reuse of data provided herewith, regardless of its format or the means of its transmission. THE DATA IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITH NO GUARANTEE OR REPRESENTATION ABOUT THE ACCURACY, CURRENCY, SUITABILITY, PERFORMANCE, MECHANTABILITY, RELIABILITY OR FITINESS OF THIS DATA FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. This dataset is NOT suitable for accurate boundary determination. Contact a licensed land surveyor if you have questions about boundary determinations.
DOWNLOAD NOTES: This dataset is only provided in Esri File Geodatabase and OGC GeoPackage formats. A shapefile is not available because the size of the dataset exceeds the limit for that format. The distribution version of the fgdb is compressed to help reduce the data footprint. QGIS users should consider using the Geopackage format for better results.
DOUGLAS COUNTY SURVEY/GISGIS PARCEL MAPPING GUIDELINES FOR PARCEL DISCREPANCIESIt is the intent of the Douglas County GIS Parcel Mapping to accurately identify the areas of land parcels to be valued and taxed 1. Discrepancies in areas• The Auditor/Assessor (tax) acreage areas started with the original US General Land Office (GLO) township plat maps created from the Public Land Survey (PLS) that was done between 1858 and 1871. The recovery of the PLS corners and the accurate location of these corners with GPS obtained coordinates has allowed for accurate section subdivisions, which results in accurate areas for parcels based on legal descriptions, which may be significantly different than the original areas. (See Example 2)• Any parcel bordering a meandered lake and/or a water boundary will likely have a disparity of area between the Auditor/Assessor acreages and the GIS acreages because of the inaccuracy of the original GLO meander lines from which the original areas were determined. Water lines are not able to be drafted to the same accuracy as the normal parcel lines. The water lines are usually just sketched on a survey and their dimensions are not generally given on a land record. The water boundaries of our GIS parcels are located from aerial photography. This is a subjective determination based on the interpretation by the Survey/GIS technician of what is water. Some lakes fluctuate significantly and the areas of all parcels bordering water are subject to constant change. In these cases the ordinary high water line (OHW) is attempted to be identified. Use of 2-foot contours will be made, if available. (See Example 1)• Some land records do not accurately report the area described in the land description and the description area is ignored. (See Example 3)• The parcel mapping has made every attempt to map the parcels based on available survey information as surveyed and located on the ground. This may conflict with some record legal descriptions.Solutions• If an actual survey by a licensed Land Surveyor is available, it will be utilized for the tax acreage.• If the Auditor/Assessor finds a discrepancy between the tax and GIS areas, they will request a review by the County Survey/GIS department.• As a starting guideline, the County Survey/GIS department will identify all parcels that differ in tax area versus GIS parcel area of 10 % or more and a difference of at least 5 acres. (This could be expanded later after the initial review.)• Each of these identified parcels will be reviewed individually by the County Survey/GIS department to determine the reason for the discrepancy and a recommendation will be made by the County Survey/GIS department to the Auditor/Assessor if the change should be made or not.• If a change is to be made to the tax area, a letter will be sent to the taxpayer informing them that their area will be changed during the next tax cycle, which could affect their property valuation. This letter will originate from the Auditor/Assessor with explanation from the County Survey/GIS department. 2. Gaps and Overlaps• Land descriptions for adjoining parcels sometimes overlap or leave a gap between them.o In these instances the Survey/GIS technician has to make a decision where to place this boundary. A number of circumstances are reviewed to facilitate this decision as these dilemmas are usually decided on a case by case basis. All effort will be made to not leave a gap, but sometimes this is not possible and the gap will be shown with “unknown” ownership. (Note: The County does not have the authority to change boundaries!)o Some of the circumstances reviewed are: Which parcel had the initial legal description? Does the physical occupation of the parcel line as shown on the air photo more closely fit one of the described parcels? Interpretation of the intent of the legal description. Is the legal description surveyable?Note: These overlaps will be shown on the GIS map with a dashed “survey line” and accompanying text for the line not used for the parcel boundary. 3. Parcel lines that do not match location of buildings Structures on parcels do not always lie within the boundaries of the parcel. This may be a circumstance of building without the benefit of a survey or of misinterpreting these boundaries. The parcel lines should be shown accurately as surveyed and/or described regardless of the location of structures on the ground. NOTE: The GIS mapping is not a survey, but is an interpretation of parcel boundaries predicated upon resources available to the County Survey/GIS department.Gary Stevenson Page 1 7/21/2017Example 1Example 2A Example 2B Example 3
This dataset is a compilation of tax parcel information for Dakota County, MNThe layer contains one record for each real estate/tax parcel polygon within the county. Condominiums are not included in the polygon layer. If condominiums are desired, use the tax parcel point layer in combination with this polygon layer.In many places a one-to-one relationship does not exist between these parcel polygons and the actual buildings or occupancy units that lie within them. There may be many buildings on one parcel and there may be many occupancy units (e.g. apartments, stores or offices) within each building. Additionally, no information exists within this dataset about residents of parcels. Currently, only tax parcel ownership (and taxpayer information) is displayed for this dataset.
Tax Parcel - Polygons
Tax Parcel - Points
Tax Parcel - Lines
Easy to navigate and search for property information. Features a large map area and a printable property card. It also includes additional map features such as streets, lakes and parks.
Washington County, MN Tax Parcels. An independent manual check of the parcel data was made at the time of its initial development whereby all geo-coded parcel legal descriptions in a PLSS section were reinterpreted and examined for accuracy and completeness on the hard copy check plot. As each new plat or lot division occurs, a similar process is repeated for the new additions during the maintenance period. Multiple lines of ownership indicating ambiguity in property line location are merged into a single line if falling within 3 feet of each other. Gaps or overlaps in these situations are not shown. In some cases where two lines converge; e.g., where at one end the two lot lines are within 0.50 feet of each other and at the other end they are within 6.00 feet of each other they may be merged because the average discrepancy is 3 feet or less. Where gaps or overlaps exist in excess of approximately 3 feet in width, they are shown with text notation indicating APPARENT GAP or AREA OF DISCREPANCY.
The 2022 cartographic boundary KMLs are simplified representations of selected geographic areas from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). These boundary files are specifically designed for small-scale thematic mapping. When possible, generalization is performed with the intent to maintain the hierarchical relationships among geographies and to maintain the alignment of geographies within a file set for a given year. Geographic areas may not align with the same areas from another year. Some geographies are available as nation-based files while others are available only as state-based files. The cartographic boundary files include both incorporated places (legal entities) and census designated places or CDPs (statistical entities). An incorporated place is established to provide governmental functions for a concentration of people as opposed to a minor civil division (MCD), which generally is created to provide services or administer an area without regard, necessarily, to population. Places always nest within a state, but may extend across county and county subdivision boundaries. An incorporated place usually is a city, town, village, or borough, but can have other legal descriptions. CDPs are delineated for the decennial census as the statistical counterparts of incorporated places. CDPs are delineated to provide data for settled concentrations of population that are identifiable by name, but are not legally incorporated under the laws of the state in which they are located. The boundaries for CDPs often are defined in partnership with state, local, and/or tribal officials and usually coincide with visible features or the boundary of an adjacent incorporated place or another legal entity. CDP boundaries often change from one decennial census to the next with changes in the settlement pattern and development; a CDP with the same name as in an earlier census does not necessarily have the same boundary. The only population/housing size requirement for CDPs is that they must contain some housing and population. The generalized boundaries of most incorporated places in this file are based on those as of January 1, 2022, as reported through the Census Bureau's Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS). The generalized boundaries of all CDPs are based on those delineated as part of the Census Bureau's Participant Statistical Areas Program (PSAP) for the 2020 Census.
This is the standard Minnesota State County Boundary dataset that is used by MNDNR and many other state agencies. It is maintained by the MNDNR Lands and Minerals Division.
Please read at the accuracy and lineage sections of this metadata to make sure this dataset is appropriate for your application!
This resource is a compilation of density and magnetic susceptibility measurements from outcrops and drill holes in Minnesota. This web map application is made available by Minnesota Geological Survey; see http://www.mngs.umn.edu/service.htm for more information. Layers provided include bedrock geology and faults, county boundaries, topographic properties, and rock property locations. This information was provided by the Minnesota Geological Survey and made available for distribution through the National Geothermal Data System.
The County parcels dataset contains polygons representing individual taxed parcels or individual tax-exempt parcels tracked for taxing purposes. It also contains polygons representing the locations of multiple tax properties (multi-PID parcels). It is the combination of the parcel base dataset and the multiple parcel base dataset with attributes from a monthly extract of the property tax information system. The PID field contains the property ID number for each parcel.In the case of multiple tax properties, several parcel polygons may be stacked on top of one another. These are multiple tax parcels that cannot be delineated on a two-dimensional map, including both taxed and tax-exempt parcels. The parcels are represented with identical geometries but have different parcel IDs and associated tax attributes.For more information about this dataset, please view metadata.
description: Minnesota's original public land survey field notes were handwritten documents prepared during the first government land survey of the state by the U.S. Surveyor General's Office between 1847 and 1911. The collection of 1,417 paper volumes totals 304,370 pages and is housed at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS). The field notes serve as the fundamental legal records for real estate in Minnesota; all property titles and descriptions stem from them. They remain an essential resource for surveyors and provide a record of the state's physical geography prior to European settlement. They also serve as a testimony to many years of hard work by the surveying community, often under very challenging conditions. The deteriorating physical condition of the volumes and the need to provide wider public access to the notes have made handling the original volumes increasingly impractical. To meet this challenge, the Office of the Secretary of State, the State Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the Minnesota Geospatial Information Office, the Minnesota Association of County Surveyors and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management collaborated in a digitization and indexing project which produced high quality (approximately 600 dpi), 24-bit color images of the maps in TIFF and JPEG 2000 formats - over 13 terabytes of data. Funding was provided by a Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage grant from the Minnesota Historical Society.; abstract: Minnesota's original public land survey field notes were handwritten documents prepared during the first government land survey of the state by the U.S. Surveyor General's Office between 1847 and 1911. The collection of 1,417 paper volumes totals 304,370 pages and is housed at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS). The field notes serve as the fundamental legal records for real estate in Minnesota; all property titles and descriptions stem from them. They remain an essential resource for surveyors and provide a record of the state's physical geography prior to European settlement. They also serve as a testimony to many years of hard work by the surveying community, often under very challenging conditions. The deteriorating physical condition of the volumes and the need to provide wider public access to the notes have made handling the original volumes increasingly impractical. To meet this challenge, the Office of the Secretary of State, the State Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the Minnesota Geospatial Information Office, the Minnesota Association of County Surveyors and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management collaborated in a digitization and indexing project which produced high quality (approximately 600 dpi), 24-bit color images of the maps in TIFF and JPEG 2000 formats - over 13 terabytes of data. Funding was provided by a Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage grant from the Minnesota Historical Society.
In 1934, the Federal Housing Administration created a financial mortgage system that rated mortgage risks for properties based on various criteria but was centered on race and ethnicity. This rating system propagated racial segregation that in many ways persists today.
The FHA Underwriting Handbook incorporated color-coded real estate investment maps that classified neighborhoods based on assumptions about a community, primarily their racial and ethnic composition, and not on the financial ability of the residents to satisfy the obligations of a mortgage loan. These maps, created by the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) were used to determine where mortgages could or could not be issued.
The neighborhoods were categoriezed into four types:
Type A : Best - newer or areas stil in demand
Type B : Still Desirable - areas expected to remain stable for many years
Type C : Definitely Declining - areas in transition
Type D : Hazardous - older areas considered risky
Neighborhoods shaded red were deemed too hazardous for federally-back loans. These "red-lined" neighborhoods were where most African American residents lived.
Many have argued tha the HOLC maps institutionalized discriminating lending practices which not only perpetuated racial segregation but also led to neighborhood disinvestment. Today, neighborhoods classified as Type C and Type D in 2934 make up the majority of neighborhoods in 2016 that are Areas of Concentrated Poverty where 50% or More are People of Color.
Minnesota's original public land survey plat maps were created between 1848 and 1907 during the first government land survey of the state by the U.S. Surveyor General's Office. This collection of more than 3,600 maps includes later General Land Office (GLO) and Bureau of Land Management maps up through 2001. Scanned images of the maps are available in several digital formats and most have been georeferenced.
The survey plat maps, and the accompanying survey field notes, serve as the fundamental legal records for real estate in Minnesota; all property titles and descriptions stem from them. They also are an essential resource for surveyors and provide a record of the state's physical geography prior to European settlement. Finally, they testify to many years of hard work by the surveying community, often under very challenging conditions.
The deteriorating physical condition of the older maps (drawn on paper, linen, and other similar materials) and the need to provide wider public access to the maps, made handling the original records increasingly impractical. To meet this challenge, the Office of the Secretary of State (SOS), the State Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), MnGeo and the Minnesota Association of County Surveyors collaborated in a digitization project which produced high quality (800 dpi), 24-bit color images of the maps in standard TIFF, JPEG and PDF formats - nearly 1.5 terabytes of data. Funding was provided by MnDOT.
In 2010-11, most of the JPEG plat map images were georeferenced. The intent was to locate the plat images to coincide with statewide geographic data without appreciably altering (warping) the image. This increases the value of the images in mapping software where they can be used as a background layer.