US Places, Then

Report this session's live calls, cache use and downloaded datasets. No network call.

Which county held a point on a date, with the act that made it so. Records were made by the county that held the place THEN: a 1795 deed for a farm now in Greene County, Pa., is in Washington County's books. Returns the holder(s), the full chain of counties for the point, and changes within a year of the date (`boundary_change_within_a_year`: check those by hand). A non-county area "attached to" a county was administered, and recorded, by that county. "contested" means two governments claimed the spot. The atlas ends in 2000 and holds no towns or townships. It says where the courthouse was, not where anyone lived.

Every version of one county: when it was created, from what, and each change. Each version carries its dates, the event ("GREENE created from WASHINGTON."), and the statute. The atlas files counties under their modern state. Use county_at for a particular place: a county's history does not say which version held a given farm.

From a land patent to the case file behind it: which file, where, and the search to run. The patent proves a conveyance on its signature date; the case file holds the application and, for a homestead, the proof of residence, witnesses and citizenship. Signature date is not purchase or settlement date: the entry came years earlier. For a military warrant the patentee may be an assignee, and the veteran is in the warrant file. Returns arguments for nara-catalog-mcp's search_records_advanced (this server cannot call it).

Find a named place in USGS's GNIS: its point, class and county. Searches the live GNIS and, given a state, its archive of August 2021, which keeps the cemeteries, churches, schools, post offices, buildings and locales GNIS dropped that year; `answered_by` says which answered. Names are modern and official, not historical spellings: Mount not Mt., no apostrophes, and a vanished place is often "X (historical)". The county is today's: pass the point to county_at. A state's archive (up to 17 MB) downloads on first use, and the result says so.

Build a link to BLM's General Land Office Records site for the user to open. No network call. GLO free text matches ANY word and ranks the results, so add a state and a category; there is no surname field. Links to the old site (before July 2026) now land on the home page: cite a patent by its accession number, document number, state and signature date, never by a link.

Every USGS topographic map covering a point, 1884 on, oldest first, with links. Each scan gives its date, scale and quadrangle, with GeoPDF, GeoTIFF and a JPEG preview; `topoview` opens the same scans as JPEG or KMZ. A map's date is its survey or edit date, not when the ground looked so: a reprint keeps it, and several scans often share it. Names are as the surveyor heard them. At 1:62,500 and larger, maps show roads, churches, schools and cemeteries, often houses; a house symbol names no one.

Read a Public Land Survey description into its parts. Makes no network call. Handles GLO's padded 0840N/0390W, T84N R39W, E½NE / E2NE / "E 1/2 NE 1/4", words ("east half of the northeast quarter"), lots, and several tracts. Aliquots expand to quarter-quarters (E½NE -> NENE, SENE). A parse is a reading of a reading: `raw` keeps the text, and `warnings` says what was guessed (a bare section number, an inferred meridian). Pass a tract to plss_locate to place it on the map.

Name the Public Land Survey tract at a point: township, range, section, quarter-quarter. Use it to turn a map pin (a cemetery, a farmstead) into the description a land patent or tract book would carry, then search the land records with it. Finds nothing in states that were never federal public domain.

Place a federal land description on the map, using BLM's PLSS data. Returns each tract's centroid and bounding box (lat/lon), BLM's ids, and the precision reached (township, section, aliquot or lot). A tract is not a house: a section's centre is up to half a mile from any point in it, and BLM's modern survey data can differ from the original plat near correction lines and water. To find the county that held it, pass the centroid and the patent's date to county_at; a county today is not the county then.

US post offices 1639-2000 (Blevins & Helbock): which existed where, and when. Years are establishment and discontinuance as Helbock compiled them: a discontinuance can be a renaming or a change to a branch, an establishment a new name, and closings under ten years are folded in (`continuous: false`). Names changed: search old names too. Counties are today's, not the county then: pass the point and year to county_at. Two offices in three have a point, from a name match to GNIS; a point search misses the rest, a county search does not. First use downloads the 31 MB dataset once, checked against Dataverse's checksum.

Was this state federal public domain, and if not, who granted its land? No network call. In a state that was never federal land (the 13 colonies, ME, VT, KY, TN, WV, TX, HI), a search for a federal patent finds nothing, and that nil says nothing about the family: first title came from the colony or state, and this says where those records are. Public-land states list their principal meridians, and the special cases (Ohio's surveys, Spanish and French claims).