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GIS Education & Resources

Digital Quarter Section Maps Of Milwaukee

 

Digital property maps for all 160,000 parcels in the City of Milwaukee are available on the University's (Alpha) computer network. These maps contain detailed information including legal parcel boundaries, public right-of-way boundaries, individual land use symbols for each property (including parking lots), street names, and title and section monument information.

 

Each digital quarter section map is approximately 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile square and is stored individually in a .dxf (digital exchange format) file which can be read by most CAD (such as AutoCAD) software and GIS (such as ARC/INFO, Intergraph, etc.) software. There are 444 quarter sections in the city (thus, 444 files on the Alpha system) and all are registered on the Wisconsin State Plane Coordinate System, based on the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD 27). Thus, they can be combined to create a seamless map of any area of the city.

• Getting the Quarter Section Maps, please contact agsl@uwm.edu at the AGS Collection of the Library, they have most current Quarter Section Maps.

Each file is identified by its Quarter Section Number, and contains the following (AutoCAD layers):

26 Quarter Section Number, Title, Scale, etc.
27 Property and Right-of-Way Boundaries
28 Land Use Symbols (see NOTE, below)
29 Parking Lots
33 Street and Border Text Labels
50 Section Corner Monuments

NOTE: Land Use Symbols (layer 28) appear on each (non-vacant) property. For major buildings, this includes the building outline gathered from aerial photos and site plans. Those for single- and two-family residences have been generalized as symbols.

 

When used in GIS software, the files provide a digital Land Use Base Map for the city of Milwaukee which can be linked to the Milwaukee Property File (MPROP) to relate descriptive data about each property (owner name, assessed value, year built, land use, zoning, etc.). Since the maps are registered on the Wisconsin State Plane Coordinate System, they can also be overlaid onto the digital orthophotos (DOPs) to show property boundaries and street rights-of-way on aerial photographs.

 

If you have any questions about the digital Land Use Base (Quarter Section) Maps for Milwaukee, please contact agsl@uwm.edu at the AGS Collection of the Library.