Oregon is a federal-land state. Lands were generally acquired from the federal government or from other individuals. Lands from the government were dispersed through a variety of programs, including the popular Homestead and Oregon Donation Land claims. Donation land claims were for early settlers who were in Oregon by 1855. These claims, filed with each land office, have been abstracted, indexed, and published by the Genealogical Forum of Oregon. Indexing is both by name and geographical location. The Oregon State Archives has the National Archives' microfilm copy of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Oregon Donation Land Claim Files, as does the FHL. The original Oregon homestead applications have been moved to the National Archives Pacific Northwest Region. The indexes and record books have been microfilmed and are available through the FHL. Other records generated through the federal land offices included cash entries, homestead final certificates, canceled homestead entries, timber-culture final certificates, canceled timber-culture entries, desert-land final certificates, canceled desert-land entries, town lots, Indian allotments, and notifications of settlers on unsurveyed lands to the surveyor general of Oregon.

Subsequent land records, including deeds and mortgages, were recorded in each county beginning at the creation of the county. For further information, consult E. Wade Hone, Land and Property Research in the United States (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1997).