Utah public records & parcel GIS sources

Easement records in Utah

We currently index 1 Utah county by hand, Salt Lake County, recording the recorder-of-deeds search page, the assessor or GIS parcel viewer, and any published map service for each one.

Utah also publishes 1 statewide source, 6 of which expose machine-readable endpoints you can query directly rather than clicking through a viewer.

About 100% of the indexed Utah 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 82 out of 100. The remainder go down for maintenance, throttle bulk requests, or change URLs without notice.

How to pull an easement document in Utah

1. Start at the County Recorder for the county where the parcel sits: Salt Lake County, UT 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. Irrigation and canal company easements are widespread across Utah's valleys; search the index for the canal company name as well as the utility.
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.

Utah easement record questions

Where are easements recorded in Utah?

With the County Recorder in the county where the land sits. Utah records with the County Recorder, an office that also maintains the tract index and the county's ownership plats. An unusually integrated setup compared with states that split index and mapping between two offices. Recording is governed by Utah Code § 57-3-102 (recording; constructive notice).

Are Utah easement records free to search?

Searching the index is generally free. Wasatch Front counties provide searchable indexes with image access, often tied to the parcel serial number. Rural counties frequently require a call or an in-person visit for images. Copies are a separate charge: Utah sets recorder fees by statute per document, with separate per-page copy and certification charges. That authority is Utah Code § 17-21-18.5 (recorder fees). Every source listed on this page can be reached without a paid data subscription.

Can an easement exist in Utah without being recorded?

Yes. Utah recognizes prescriptive easements after 20 years of open, continuous, and unpermitted use (Marchant v. Park City, 788 P.2d 520 (Utah 1990); Valcarce v. Fitzgerald, 961 P.2d 305 (Utah 1998)), 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 Utah easement records?

Utah recorders index by tax serial number as well as by name, which makes a parcel-based search genuinely reliable here, unlike states where the parcel number never touches the recorded index.

How current are these Utah sources?

Each county hub carries the date it was last checked by hand, and the oldest verification in Utah 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.