Illinois public records & parcel GIS sources

Easement records in Illinois

We currently index 2 Illinois counties by hand, Cook County and DuPage County, recording the recorder-of-deeds search page, the assessor or GIS parcel viewer, and any published map service for each one.

Illinois also publishes 2 statewide sources, 6 of which expose machine-readable endpoints you can query directly rather than clicking through a viewer.

About 50% of the indexed Illinois counties publish spatial layers, meaning you can see parcel and corridor geometry rather than only a document index. Median platform reliability across those counties is 89 out of 100. The remainder go down for maintenance, throttle bulk requests, or change URLs without notice.

How to pull an easement document in Illinois

1. Start at the County Recorder or County Clerk for the county where the parcel sits: Cook County, IL is linked below and search by the current owner's name or by the book and page cited on Schedule B of your title commitment. Illinois drainage districts hold widespread easement rights across farmland; check the district as well as the county index for rural parcels.
2. Pull the plat or subdivision map for the lot. Platted easements are drawn with widths and dimensions, which the deed language often omits entirely.
3. Open the county parcel or GIS viewer to see how recorded corridors sit relative to the boundary. Treat these as approximate: GIS parcel lines are digitized from tax maps and routinely differ from a surveyed line by several feet.
4. Check the statewide and federal sources below for corridors the county will not have. Pipelines, transmission lines, rail, and floodplain or drainage districts are typically mapped at the state or federal level.
5. Order a boundary or ALTA survey before construction. Public records tell you an easement exists; only a survey tells you where it lands on your lot.

Illinois easement record questions

Where are easements recorded in Illinois?

With the County Recorder or County Clerk in the county where the land sits. Illinois is mid-consolidation. Counties historically had a separate elected Recorder, and many have now merged that function into the County Clerk. Cook County among them. The office name to look for therefore differs by county. Recording is governed by 765 ILCS 5/28 (recording of instruments affecting land).

Are Illinois easement records free to search?

Searching the index is generally free. Cook and the collar counties provide full online index and image access. Downstate counties vary widely, and several still direct copy requests to a mailed form. Copies are a separate charge: Illinois moved to predictable flat-rate recording fees per document type; copy charges remain per page and are set locally within statutory limits. That authority is 55 ILCS 5/3-5018 (recorder fees). Every source listed on this page can be reached without a paid data subscription.

Can an easement exist in Illinois without being recorded?

Yes. Illinois recognizes prescriptive easements after 20 years of open, continuous, and unpermitted use (735 ILCS 5/13-101; common law prescription), and access by necessity can be implied when a parcel would otherwise be landlocked. Neither appears in a records search, which is why walking the property matters as much as reading the index.

What trips people up when searching Illinois easement records?

Because the recording function moved from Recorder to Clerk in a number of counties, older links and title commitments point to an office that no longer exists under that name. Start from the county's own website rather than a saved bookmark.

How current are these Illinois sources?

Each county hub carries the date it was last checked by hand, and the oldest verification in Illinois is shown at the top of this page. County offices move URLs and change platforms often, so a hub that has not been verified recently should be treated as a lead rather than a guarantee.