Written by Nate C.
Researching the history of a property can be both a rewarding experience and frustrating process. This is largely because the availability of resources varies widely depending upon the location of the property. Resources available to you, and avenues of research, will vary depending on the availability of county records and whether the property is within a municipality, or in an unincorporated area.
Below is a list of resources and processes useful for discovering information about a property. Unfortunately, not all of this will work for everyone.
Assessor Records
The most common first step is to use the property search feature of the county Assessor’s website. These searches can be challenging. (For example, streets in the City of Snohomish are spelled out “First” and not listed as “1st”.) If you don’t find the property right away, broaden your search. You might need to search just with the house number and browse through the list to find the correct property.
- Snohomish County Assessor: https://snohomishcountywa.gov/5167/Assessor
- Island County Assessor: https://www.islandcountywa.gov/271/Parcel-Search
The Assessor will not maintain much historical information on the property. Often just the last few owners. The important piece of information you want to glean from the Assessor is the age of the structure. The year the house was built.
It is important not to make too many assumptions from this date. Houses are torn down and new ones built, resetting the structure date. We have also seen buildings that have been moved, and this date reflects the age of the building, not how long it has been on the property.
The Snohomish County Assessor’s office maintains a Historical Records database. It does not stretch too far into the past but if you are lucky there is a historic photograph of the structure.
The Island County Assessor’s office should have property records online for the last 7 years. They have some records for the 1970-1990s on microfilm. However, many of their records have been sent to the Washington State Archives Northwest Regional Branch in Bellingham.
Historic Maps
Granite Falls Museum
The Granite Falls Historical Society has created a fantastic mapping tool for tracking the changes to properties through time.
You can find it on their website at https://www.gfhistory.org/Maps.html
First click on the “Explore Snohomish County ca 1910” link to find an interactive map that gives you an aerial view of the county. If you zoom in, the map will convert to a 1910 Plat Map which will show property ownership. This is where we see the first divergence in resources between City and County properties. This resource is far more effective for properties that are located outside of municipalities.
Next, click on the “Homesteads and Maps from the first 100 years of the county” link. This map functions similarly to the previous one but allows for easier browsing of the modern aerial map and a variety of time periods. Using this tool, it is very easy to find a property and then cycle through the years in the left panel, observing the change in ownership through time.
To view the Homesteader information:
- Choose Homesteads from the layer menu on the left.
- Once you have identified the area encompassed in red, click the area and a pop-up window will appear with the homesteader information.
Sanborn Maps
Sanborn was a fire insurance company that went through the country selling fire insurance and mapping cities. The result being these fantastic resources for historic homes. However, they focus on properties within a municipality, so they are unfortunately not helpful for county properties.
You can find the complete collection of Sanborn Maps at the Library of Congress website. You can limit by state and city from there.
These maps provide several different points of information about a property, including outbuildings and the changing footprint of houses. However, their most valuable feature is how they show the changing house numbers and even street names through time.
Here we see two properties in 1897 and 1905. Notice the change in footprints, outbuildings and house numbers. The 1905 map shows both the older and newer house numbers.
City Directories
Once you have confirmation on house numbers and street names, you can then take advantage of city directories to gain information about residents.
As with all of these resources, not all properties will appear in a city directory. Not all cities are covered, and many county properties are listed without a street or house number. Most city directories are for a larger city and then happen to include smaller surrounding cities. For example, the “Everett and Vicinity” city directories will often include subsections with cities like Marysville, Arlington and Snohomish included.
Sno-Isle Libraries does own a number of city directories. However, a larger collection, with older volumes, can be found through the library’s subscription to Ancestry.com found on the Genealogy Resource page.
City directories can be a very powerful tool, but they require patience and persistence. You can’t search for them by address, so you need to browse through all the names in town, looking for the address.
If you were able to find your property in the Granite Falls mapping software, you should have names to help you find entries. However, it is important to note that the city directories show where people lived. The properties in the mapping software show ownership, and not necessarily residence.
Below is an example of an entry from a 1909 Snohomish City Directory. It shows the Padden family living at 421 Ave A. (One of the properties from our Sanborn example.)
The directories provide some wonderful details about residents, including “h” home, “b” boarder, place of employment, and status (widow, student). However, it is important to note that the directories do not provide ownership information. Residents could be renters.
Census Records
Hopefully, at this point, you have some names connected to the property you are researching. Either through the Granite Falls Historical Society mapping software or the city directories. You can now search for these individuals in Census Records.
(It is possible to browse Census Records, looking for the property, but this technique is less effective because many Census Record entries do not include the house number and occasionally not even the street.)
You can search Census Records through a number of our subscriptions on the Genealogy Resource page or through websites like FamilySearch. Like the city directories, these records can contain interesting biographical information about the residents. Here is the beginning of the entry for the Padden’s. (Notice it does include the house number.) One of the important pieces of information that we can get from Census records is ownership status. In a column not shown in this image, there is a designation that tells us that she was the owner of the property.
From here you can treat your property research as genealogy research. Finding information about the residents through a variety of documents such as marriage and military records, wills and probates, and death certificates and obituaries.
County Recorder’s Office
Finally, consider checking in with your county records office.
The Snohomish County Recording Division has an online portal where you can search with a name or Parcel ID.
According to the Recording Division, online records are from 1976 to 2025, with most of those records being digitized. You might find some documents cited that will need to be extracted from microfilm.
In addition to the online portal, they have microfilmed records from 1860 to 1976. However, they can only be searched by the name of the owner. (Remember, some of the names you might have acquired through this process could be renters.)
Island County residents should consider reaching out to the Recording Office to determine the nature of the archive they maintain.
Got questions? Ask us!
If you would like assistance with your property research, Sno-Isle Librarians are here to assist you. Book a Librarian to receive one-on-one, personalized assistance from library or contact us by email, chat, text, or phone.
