In this blog post, you will find the link to a tool to find Municipio Boundaries in Mexico and an explanation of how to use it in your genealogy research.
I want to thank Julie Workman for letting me know about this tool and of how useful it is in her research.
The name of the tool is called County Lines on Google Maps and it was created by Randy Majors. As the name of the tool implies, it was developed to help researchers and family historians easily find towns in the United States and be able to easily see the county that it belonged to.
Years ago I had stumbled upon the tool but ignored it since all of my research is based on Mexico. It wasn't until Julie showed me how useful it was for Mexican research.
How to Use the Tool
Once you arrive at the tool it looks confusing and cluttered with advertisements, just ignore them.
The most important thing about the tool is the search box. Honestly it does not stand out and I missed it several times. On the image below I have highlighted the search box for you. Once you view the map it is located right on top as indicated on the image below.
The second important thing is that you need to press "Ctrl" on your keyboard in order to be able to scroll the map in and out. To do this you can also press the + or - signs on the tool.
To demonstrate the power of the tool I searched for Monterrey in order to view the municipio boundary of Monterrey and to see the surrounding municipios too.
How It Can Help In Your Research
The way to use it is to search for the towns that you ancestors came from so you can see what municipio they are located at. Then look at the biggest town in that municipio and that will be the place to search for records about your ancestors.
Keep in mind this tool has the latest municipio boundaries and not the historical boundaries. These municipalities were created after the 1820's.
Visit the Tool to Find Municipio Boundaries in Mexico
I hope that you find this tool useful in your research.
Here is the link to it: https://www.randymajors.com/p/countygmap.html
