Map Notes
Map Layers are turned off/on through the Layers Menu. Additionally the map scale determines if a layer is visible. For example the Parcel Lines and Structures are turned off automatically when a map is Zoomed out past an extent where the detail becomes lost. The County Boundry layer is always on.

NC State Plane coordinates and Lat/Long coordinates are displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the browser. DEC is Lat/Long in decimal degrees, DMS is Lat/Long in degrees, minutes, seconds.


If your browsers status bar does not display the coordinate information the FAQ page contains instructions on how to fix the problem.

General Search Help
Parcel ID, LRK, Plat Book and Page, and Tile searches must be exact. For the Owner, Address, and Subdivision searches you can use a portion of the name starting at the beginning of the name. The Owner Name (any portion), Street Name (any portion) and Landmark searches use any portion of the name.

Upper and lowercase will return the same results. Only use alphabetic characters and numbers, don't use any punctuation.

Map Tool Help
When you click one time on the following tools the tool becomes active, and you can use that tool to interact with the map. Only one tool is active at a time. There is a slightly diffrent look to the active tool.
Zoom In, draw a box on the map to zoom in, or a single click will give you a fixed zoom in.
Zoom Out, draw a box on the map to zoom out. The smaller the box the farther you will zoom out. A single click will give you a fixed zoom out.
Pan, hold the mouse down and drag it to change the extent of the map.
Measure, The Measure tool works by clicking points. The first click will display a red dot. After the second click a red line will be drawn between the points and a Measure Results window will open. As you click on more points a new line will be drawn and the Measure Results window will be updated. After three or more clicks a red dash line will be drawn between the last point and the first point and the area will be caculated. A double click will finish the current measurement session. The Measure Results window is considered a pop up and you may have to allow your browser to accept pop ups from this site. The Measure Results window will close by itself after 30 seconds. This tool only works with Internet Explorer. Drawing intersecting lines will give you bogus area results. Double clicking on your first point may cause a blue box on your display.
Identify, click on a parcel and it will be selected and the parcel information will be displayed below the map.
Lat/Long, for every mouse click the latitude and longitude coordinates will be displayed, in decimal degrees and degrees minutes and seconds, in the box below the map. If your browser is a recent version of Internet Explorer a red dot will be shown near the last mouse click. FireFox will not show the mouse click on the map. It is up to the user to keep track of which set of coordinates corrospond to each map point. The Print Lat/Long Report button will give you printable report of the coordinates.
Select by Rectangle, draw a box on the map. Every parcel that is intersected by the box will be highlighted and summary information for those parcels will be displayed below the map. You can then click on the Parcel ID link to highlight a particular parcel.

The next two tools work by clicking the tool.
Clear Selection, will clear the highlight on the parcel(s).
Full Map, will display the Full County map.

When you hold the mouse pointer over a tool, a box will appear with a short tool description and directions for using the tool.

Address Search Help, there are two address searches;
The Address search can return a specific address, or it will return a list of addresses when a specific match is not found.
The Street Name (any portion) search is more general and will return list of addresses on one or more streets.

All address must follow the County Addressing Conventions to work. Use the Prefix, Street Type, and Suffix in the street name rather than spelling out what is in the Description field.

For most address's if the street name starts with North, South, East, or West use the abbreviations N, S, E, or W. Also do not spell out street types, i.e. Avenue, Street, or Road. Use Av, St, and Rd. The County Addressing Convention document contains valid abbreviations, street types, and examples of NC and US route naming conventions.

For either search less information is better than more. If you are having trouble finding a address don't spell everything out. Use a portion of the street name starting at the beginning. For example East Bandys Road wiil not return any matches E Bandys will return a list of address. Another example Buffalo Shoals Road will not return any matches. Buffalo S will return a list of address.

If you are searching for a Hickory address and are not finding any matches try searching the Alexander, Burke or Caldwell County GIS sites. Hickory addresses extend into those counties. Similarly LongView addresses extend into Burke County, and Maiden and Denver addresses extend into Lincoln County.
Links to surrounding county GIS Web Sites can be found on the GIS Home page under the GIS Links menu.

Browser/Display Notes
This application has been tested with Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 7.2, and Firefox. Other browsers may not always work with this application.

The minimum recommended display resolution is 800x600. A resolution greater than that is will give you a better display.

The size of the map is set when the web page initially loads so before starting the application setting you browser to its full extent will give you a larger map.

Your browser must accept cookies for this application to work.