Temple-Inland Land Department Surveyor Field Notebooks, 1913-1990

Ownership of vast amounts of East Texas and Western Louisiana forestland was a major component of the Temple Companies business for much of the 20th century. The land allowed them to cut their own timber and also provided capital. One of the main jobs of the members of the Land and Timber Department was to maintain a record of the company’s lands and the lands it acquired and sold throughout the years. The company’s surveyors recorded their work in field books, which were kept in the Land department until the sale of the company’s lands in 2007. These field books recorded the boundaries of the company’s lands and were useful for logging purposes, but also for tax, real estate, mineral rights, and legal claims. These books were carried by the individual surveyors and reflect the surveying style of each man who carried and used them. In this collection, each book is described using the surveyor’s notes; the county and the names of the original title holders and abstracts are listed, as are some of the towns, landowners, railroads, and mineral companies. They are roughly divided by surveyor, but their numbering and order is the same as it was when the collection was in use by Temple-Inland.