Finding Massachusetts County Road Layouts
I’m trying to find, online, plans of certain former Middlesex County, MA county road layouts from the 1950s. FYI for those in other parts of the country, Middlesex is one of several Massachusetts counties which pretty much abolished their governments in the 1990s (and Connecticut abolished all its county governments in 1960).
It looks like the Middlesex County Commissioners were recording road layout plans with the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds at least as far back as 1964, but that’s as far back as plans have been indexed for online searching by name (“Middlesex County Commissioners”) or town. I suspect that earlier road layout plans have been digitized and are on the website, and can be accessed if you know the year and plan number, but the trick is finding the plan number. All of the references I’ve seen to old county road layouts say simply “County Layout of 1954,” for example.
Does anyone know of a source, other than the Registry, for an index of year and plan numbers for these layouts from the 1950s? Or is there a better source than the Registry for the layouts themselves (that doesn’t require driving into Cambridge ????)?
I’ve looked at the MassDOT website but have found info only for much newer, state roads. I also found an index on the umass.edu website, but only for Hampshire County.
Thanks!
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