Mapping restrictive covenants in Benton County

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Binders of housing deeds in the Benton County archives

By Colin Bowyer, Communications Manager - August 28, 2025

Racial restrictive housing covenants have existed in Oregon since the mid-19th century. Recorded when a lot was created or home was built, these clauses inserted into deeds specifically excluded Black, Pan-Asian, or Indigenous individuals from purchasing lots, as well as building and residing in residential structures. Coupled with the practice of redlining undertaken by banks and realty groups, people of color were systematically prevented from homeownership across the country. It was not until the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 that the racial restrictive covenants became illegal, yet, 150 years later, restrictive language continues to appear in land deeds across Oregon.

 In a new multidisciplinary research project, Associate Professor of History Marisa Chappell and Assistant Professor Jim Thatcher in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences are collaborating to map existing restrictive covenants in Benton County, Oregon. 

Inspired by a similar research project in the Seattle region by University of Washington History Professor James Gregory, Chappell and Thatcher, along with three undergraduate research assistants that came to the work through the URSA Engage program, are combing through property records to document racially restrictive covenants throughout the 679 square miles of Benton County.

Chappell and Thatcher chose to look at covenants put in place prior to 1948, because that year the Supreme Court found racial restrictive covenants to be legally unenforceable based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 2024, Oregon congressional bill ​​HB3294 went into effect that required county clerks to review and replace discriminatory language in housing covenants.

“We’re in the midst of a very laborious discovery phase,” explained Chappell. “A majority of the deeds in the archives are not digitized and many are missing or incomplete, which will require us to do some additional digging. Compounding the issue is that restrictive language in housing covenants is not always located in a consistent section of the deeds. You can’t just flip to a specific page and always see one.” 

Addie Landstrom, a senior majoring in geography and geospatial science, as well as minoring in sociology, was one of the URSA students who participated in archival research. Landstrom and her peers, Ekansh Gupta and Addison Hancock, conducted a systematic review of over 35 volumes of deed records from 1925 to 1948. After two weeks of reviewing records that had already been digitally scanned by Benton County, their data collection focused primarily on historical deed records accessed via physical book form and microfilm. 

“For me,” Landstrom explained, “being a part of this project was an eye-opening experience in archival work. I learned just how much time and effort goes into a historical map making project like this. Every part of it is significant, even though sometimes you feel like you’re not making any progress.”

Landstrom, Hancock, and Gupta presented their findings at the Undergraduate Humanities Conference in spring 2025. 

Thus far, Chappell, Thatcher and the URSA students have found 19 racially-explicit covenants tied to plots in the city of Corvallis, as well as more than a dozen references to additional racial covenants that have not yet been specially documented. They have also found other restrictive covenants that contributed to racial exclusion with language regarding class and wealth, including rules specifying that the home built on the lot needs to be of a minimum value. 

After the Benton County housing records have been reviewed, the second phase of the project will involve Thatcher’s cartography team, as they try to digitally map where the racial covenants existed in Benton County.

"Finding a match between deeds from the early 20th Century and the land plots that exist today in Benton County is going to be a huge endeavor,” said Thatcher. “Unlike in some more urban areas, the deeds from before 1948 do not necessarily match existing plots today and don't always rely on standardized measuring units, like [the surveying tool] Gunter's chain.” 

For instance, the research team is finding that the plot measurements aren’t consistent across counties in Oregon and occasionally use reference points, such as a named stone wall or street sign, that no longer exist. Even when recognizable measurements are used, the researchers found several deeds that use no longer existing streets or even one that uses the location of a long-gone horse hitching post as a reference point.

“There are so many layers to this project,” Thatcher continued. “The amount of data manipulation needed to create spatial data is certainly a challenge, but we also need archival expertise, data expertise, and geospatial expertise.”

For now, Thatcher is working on developing the methodology for accurately applying the archival data to a modern system of measurement and cartography. Nevertheless, the team hopes to wrap up its archival discovery phase in fall 2025 and work on creating an interactive digital map for winter 2026.

“This project is significant for many reasons,” Chappell said. “But it really goes to show the value of building an interdisciplinary team, as well as think about how data infrastructure and legacies are incorporated into modern society.”