I don’t know if you are aware of this, but you can plot out old homesteads on Google Earth with some really cool tools. Google Earth and Earth Point, are great tools for doing this, and they are both free!!!
Miller Couny, Arkansas; Township 016S, Range 028W, Section 22 and 35
Last week when I did the 52 Ancestor post for William Davis, I realized I had never really done anything with the homestead information that I had on him. Having Google Earth open on my desktop, I plugged the State, Meridian, Township, Range and Section information that I got from the Bureau of Land Management Records on William Davis into this really cool website, Earth Point. You must have Google Earth open on your desk top, then enter the information and click FLY TO ON GOOGLE EARTH.
Earth Point
I work on Google Chrome, so after I hit the Fly to button, it downloads a file to my computer. I click on that file, and it will pop open Google Earth and then you will see that Township and Range on Google Earth, like in the photo above.
Google Earth Fly To from Earth Point
Once this information is in Google Earth, you can see other information about the section. For instance if you click on the button in the middle of the section, you can see more information about that section.
Section Information
You can save this information in Google Earth and if you had a plat map for that section, you could integrate it into Google Earth and mark the specific location. I plan to do that next, as soon as I locate a plat map for Miller County. Looks like a road trip to Texarkana is in the making!
