When talking about nature in the urban environment, we often start to wonder what was there before the city. There are several resources for finding this information.

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One is to look at the General Land Office (GLO) maps. These are a set of survey maps documenting original settlements and land ownership in Oregon, dating between the mid-1800’s to the turn of the century. Notably, most include details about existing vegetation at that time.

These maps can be found at the UO Library website. The maps are organized by the Public Land Survey System (township and range). If you don’t know this info for your site, check out the maps and conversion tools on this page.

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If you know how to use ArcGIS, you can also look at the 1851 Vegetation Maps. This data set has very detailed information on vegetation in the mid-19th century Willamette Valley.

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Another good resource is OSU’s Oregon Explorer. They have a wealth of information including high quality aerial photography, watershed data, and more.

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The UO Library’s map page has many more useful resources, including other historical maps, aerial photography, USGS topo maps, and GIS data (available online and from the PDX Library desk for the most up-to-date data). Happy mapping!