Chapter 27. Short answers
Part 5. Questions people ask.
Your report is private
Only people who have its link can open it, and it never shows the street address you typed. The one public report is the sample, with its owner's consent; it is the same page for everyone, which is why it cannot be searched further or forgotten.
The site is free
There is no account, no payment and no email address to give. Offices and archives that you visit later may charge for their own copies.
No account is needed
Your report's link is your way back to it. Keep the link somewhere safe (Chapter 23).
Land you don't own
The records are public, so any Oregon land can be looked up: a grandparent's farm, a schoolyard, a park. The report stays private to whoever made it.
Land outside Oregon
Version 1.1 covers land anywhere in Oregon, and only Oregon. Washington is surveyed on the same grid, but the site does not yet gather Washington's records. Other states may follow.
Tax lots outside Polk County
In this version the site can search tax lots only in Polk County, whose lot lines it has loaded. For other counties it reads the township, range and section out of your map number and offers to go on with those (Chapter 1). You get a history of the whole section, which includes your lot.
Records marked "Found nearby"
The record is real but is not about your land itself. It is about an earlier claim that included your land, about land beside yours, or about the region. The report sets such records apart so a neighbor's patent can never be read as yours (Chapter 17).
When "The people before the surveyors" names no one
The records that name individual people, such as treaty councils and published studies, mostly cover whole valleys and have not yet been read for every township. For much of Oregon the report can name the bands, the treaty and the nations today, but not yet the people. Chapter 16 of Knowing Your Land shows where to look, and the tribes are the authority on their own history.
Bearing trees
A bearing tree is a tree that a government surveyor marked and wrote down beside a corner post, so that the corner could be found again. The surveyor recorded its kind, its width, its compass bearing from the post and its distance. On the sample farm, 15 of the 23 recorded trees were oaks.
A report is not a survey
The outlines are pictures drawn from map layers, and they are approximate, so a report cannot settle a boundary dispute. It tells the land's history. For where a boundary runs, ask a licensed land surveyor; for who owns the land, ask a title company.
Today's owner is not in the report
Who owns the land now is a question of title, which the site does not search. The county clerk's deed records carry the chain of owners from the first patent to today, and "If you're hooked" says how to start.
The two acre figures
One is the county's figure, the one on your tax statement. The other is measured from the outline on the map. They are made in different ways for different jobs, so they seldom match.
A computer program writes each report
Each part is written by a computer program from the public records it cites. No person reviews your report before you read it. The sample is the one exception, in part: its "The people before the surveyors" was written and checked by a person, and its last lines say so. Every sentence points to its record, so you can check any of them yourself.
The note "Reading needs checking"
Some records, such as the surveyors' notebooks, exist only as handwriting. A machine read the handwriting and typed it, and no person has yet checked that typing against the page. The record panel says "Typed from the handwriting by machine. Not yet checked by a person." and adds the note "Reading needs checking." The appendix's "How sure we are" says the same once for the whole report. Open at the source shows the page itself, so you can judge for yourself.
Using the pictures
Most of the pictures can be used. The source line under each picture names where it came from. Records made by federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management's plats and field notes and the U.S. Geological Survey's maps, are generally free for anyone to use. For others, ask the source the line names. Whenever you use a picture, give its source line with it.
Citing a report or a record
For a record, touch its raised number, then Copy citation, and paste. For the whole report, give its name, "Your Land History," the date of its version (the last line of the appendix), and its link if readers should be able to open it.
Publishing a report or adding your own papers
Neither is possible in this version. You can give the link to anyone you choose, and you can print the report.
How current a report is
Each record shows the date the site retrieved it, and the version line at the end of the appendix shows when the report last changed. Look deeper into this searches again.