County Layout Plans now on computer

We just finished scanning our “county layout plans” which are plans that were prepared by the Middlesex County Engineering Department to show takings by the county for roads and other governmental functions. Most of these plans were created during the first half of the Twentieth Century, but registry customers often make use of them. Formerly, we had them rolled up in a closet and would produce them any time they were requested. Now that we’ve scanned them, they are available on the in-house public access computer system (it will be a while until we get them on the website). There is also a bit of a trick to displaying them, but that information is contained in the following paragraph:

At any one of our regular public access terminals, go to the Recorded Land search page and select the “document” tab at the top of the search box. In the “Book” window, enter 200 and in the “Plan” window enter 1. Click “search” and when a line of data appears, double click on it. That causes the pop-up plan viewing window to appear with the plan in plan book 200, page 1. (shown in above picture). Click in that Plan Book window, delete the “200” and enter the “town plan code” from the list below. If you’re looking for a county layout plan in Billerica, for example, you would enter 910. Leave the number 1 in the plan window. Then click the “Next Plan” button to the right of the viewer. If the first Billerica plan only contains one sheet, that sheet will immediately display. If there is more than one sheet (which is frequently the case), a series of numbers will appear in the “”sheets in plan” window. Click on each (usually they are numbered 0001, 0002, etc) to display.

These plans have never been numbered in a way we can duplicate on our computers, so for now you have to just click through each until you find the one you’re looking for. We are working on an index for all of these plans which would list the names of the streets shown on each plan plus the corresponding plan number within our system. Once that index is done, I’ll write about it here. In the meantime, please check out this new feature.