MT · what the record looks like

Land records in Lewis and Clark County, MT

The online index of recorded instruments for Lewis and Clark County starts in 2001. Anything recorded before that is on paper, at the courthouse, and nowhere else.

Read from what the office publishes about itself on 4 September 2026. Every source is linked at the foot of this page, so you can check it rather than trust us.

The record, in short

Who records a deed here	the Clerk and Recorder for Lewis and Clark County
Online index	Yes
Index reaches back to	2001
Cost to search the index	free
Document images	behind a paywall
Published through	Tyler Technologies (EagleWeb, county-hosted)
The office's own warning	It says its online record is incomplete

The office says so itself: “The index is similar to a library card catalogue; it is a guide to the information contained within the documents referenced and should not be relied upon in making any decision or determination regarding the underlying document.”

What we could not establish

A question we could not settle is worth more to you stated than smoothed over, so here are the ones this office left open.

How far the conversion of pre-2001 records has actually reached could not be established. The county says it is ongoing.

How this state works

Montana has no statewide system and no dominant vendor across its 56 counties, so each county is its own question. Lewis and Clark's own site says records have been automated since April 2001 and that converting the older ones is ongoing - the search form will offer you dates far earlier than that, which is the widget's range rather than the county's coverage.

What to ask, and who holds the answer

The office named above will answer a specific question on the phone, and the most useful one you can ask is what year their online index actually starts. It is a one-line answer and it tells you how much of the chain of title you can read from a desk. Everything older than that year exists, it is simply not online - so an empty search result is not evidence that nothing was recorded.

See what the record says about one parcel

We run a free screen on any parcel in the United States: the flood zone, wetlands, the survey grid, which county and township you are actually in, who manages the land around it, and what was recorded there before. Every line names the record it came from. No charge, no account.