I’ve been working on a project that maps out the riverfront property in Wenatchee where development is currently taking place or is expected to take place in the coming years. As part of the project I made a trip over to the Chelan County Assessor’s Office to get some information on property ownership and I was surprised to see some of the cool technology the folks over there use to do their jobs.

I forget the name of the mapping software that is used at the Assessor’s Office but it is really, really neat and really, really detailed. Oh, and it is really, really complicated too.

How detailed and complicated is it? It makes Google Earth look like a simple application created by a preschooler.

While it is not the exact same software the Assessor’s Office uses, you too can play around with mapping tools on the computer and look at who owns what in Chelan County and how much it is worth. Just go to this Web site and click on “Special Interess MapOptix” on the top right side of the page. It’s some pretty interesting stuff.

One word of caution though, I don’t think the application will work on a Mac because I couldn’t get it to work properly at my desk computer, which is a Mac. However, I went to a PC nearby in the newsroom and it worked just fine.