2005 Logan County plat book available

[MAY 17, 2005]  The new 2005 Logan County Land Atlas and Plat is now available for purchase through several local distributors, including Bock & Associates, Mike Maske Auction Service, Lincoln College, Logan County Title Company, Farmers State Bank of Emden and the State Bank of Lincoln. These distributors, along with local advertisers, cooperatively funded the Logan County plat book project. The last Logan plat book was published in 1996, so an updated version was sorely needed.

This 15th edition was compiled and published by Rockford Map Publishers, a company that has a long history in Logan County and throughout Illinois.

The new plat book provides a bounty of reference data on the local community. Current ownership information such as acreage and parcel boundaries, an index to owners, an index to roads, and a general highway map are standard features in the books. In addition, the 2005 Logan County edition includes a city map of Lincoln and a government directory.

Plat books are county atlases that show rural land ownership. They are invaluable reference tools to a number of industries, including real estate, land development and municipal government.

The plat data is used in many different ways, including land-use studies and appraisal report submissions, as well as to provide JULIE with land information for digging permits. Recreationally, hunters take advantage of a feature that allows them to determine which lands they can legally hunt, while property owners collect the books as a record of their family land.

The first Logan County plat book from the Illinois-based mapping company was published 40 years ago. A lot has changed in the county since 1965, and the company has recorded land transactions every step of the way, creating a unique opportunity for historical and genealogical research.

According to the website www.rockfordmap.com, retrospect historical copies of every past edition are available online or by calling [phone].

The 2005 Logan book has undergone a conversion process to the publishing company's new digital format. Beginning with the founding in 1944 and until the new digital format was put into place in 2001, cartographers drew and labeled every single plat book page by hand. The digital transition means that the new edition has a drastically more modern appearance than its predecessors.

The digital conversion process allows the company to present its books in a full-color, easy-to-read format. The progress in methodology means the plat maps are no longer illustrated township-by-township but are first created as a view of the entire county and then broken down into pages for the books. The original full-color image is offered as a seamless, laminated wall map. Also, the plat information is now provided in a variety of alternative digital formats compatible with commonly used programs like Adobe, PhotoShop and AutoCAD, as well as most GIS mapping software.

For more information on where to purchase the book around the county, contact Bock & Associates at 735-2625.

[Rockford Map Publishers news release]