Using Access Dane

The first step in researching tax rolls is to collect any information you might already have on the property description or property owners. At a minimum, you will need the current street address and the municipality in which the property is located. Additional information that might be helpful includes previous owners and when a house was built (even if it’s an approximate date).
The next step is to find the Parcel Number and the legal description of the property. If you don’t have that information at hand, you can find it at https://accessdane.danecounty.gov/. Access Dane also takes a little practice to master. Access Dane only contains information for properties in Dane County.
In Access Dane, enter the address or property owner (make sure you specify which of the two you want to search for by selecting the appropriate button). Access Dane has a specific way of entering addresses, so sometimes it’s better to enter the street number and then just a few letters of the street name; usually several options will pop up, one of which should be the address you’re looking for.
Once you find the address, select it; the information for your specific property will appear with Parcel Detail, Assessment Summary, etc. Sometimes, you will get a list of several potential properties with similar street addresses; select the one most likely to be your property.
In the Parcel Detail box near the top, select the “More +” option to expand that box. The legal description will appear in the line labeled Parcel Description partway down in that box. You are looking for either a section description (ie., Sec 36-7-6 SW¼NW¼, found in most property descriptions outside developed areas); an addition, block, and lot number (found in the villages of Mount Horeb and Blue Mounds), or maybe an outlot number (sometimes on the outskirts of Mount Horeb). If the property was subdivided, the property description might be more complicated. Write down the description (or print it if it’s a long description)

Here’s an example of a property on Access Dane with the property description highlighted (in this case it’s a section number description):

In this example, the parcel description lists Section, Township and then Range and then the QQ of the QQ.
If the property you are researching has a Block and Lot number, or an outlot number, see Researching property within the Villages of Mount Horeb or Blue Mounds.

If the property you are researching has a section number, continue below:

There are times, especially with section number property descriptions (or outlots), that seeing the property on a map with the sections and quarter sections would be helpful. For these properties, you will often need to trace a property back in the tax records using the section number descriptions. You can see this type of map in Access Dane by selecting the “DCimap” button under the map image on the property description page. Once the map opens, select “Survey System” and also open the drop down menu for the Survey System; check both “Quarter Quarter Sections” and “Quarter Sections,” which will put all the section lines on the map. Zooming out a little will help you see in which section the property is located, while zooming in will show you the location in relation to quarter and quarter quarter section lines. The numbers shown on this map are listed as Township, Range and then Section.
Print this map, or take notes on the property’s relationship to the section lines, roads, and any other features you see on the map.

The process just described is the easiest way to find out where a current property falls in relation to the section lines, road or other farms that are on earlier plat maps.