Counties haunted by antiquated subdivision maps

The state Supreme Court will probably have to decide which old subdivision maps are legal, reports the Chronicle.  For example, one landowner wants to subdivide prime agricultural land in Solano County for houses.

Ferrari, however, claims in an October Superior Court case that he has a detailed drawing that shows his land was subdivided nearly a century ago into roughly 10-acre rectangular parcels. County officials say the map, filed with the county recorder in 1909, has no legal effect.

"Either it’s a real map or it isn’t,’’ said Ferrari, the owner of a Mountain View engineering firm whose family bought the farmland on Abernathy Road as an investment two decades ago. He quit farming it over the last three years because it lost money, he said.

Ferrari’s case could have enormous statewide development implications because the number of so-called antiquated subdivisions or ghost lots shown on historic maps is estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

This case and others in three more counties may have to be eventually decided by the Supreme Court. Some counties don’t accept maps drawn before 1929, about the time counties began to decide land use.  Landowners’ attorneys argue that maps going back to the state’s first subdivision maps laws in 1893 should be valid.