Federal Land Records in State Repositories: The Experience in the Old Northwest

The state archives or historical societies in many public land states hold a group of federal records that document the disposing of the federal domain, the records of the local land district offices of the U.S. General Land Office. This article traces the custodial history of land district records for the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota from their creation in the nineteenth century to their availability and use today. Changes in federal records-disposal practices and varying responses by archivists and historical agencies produced very different results in the six states, particularly between the three states whose land offices closed in 1877 and the three that closed in 1925.