1. Start with the legal description
Wyoming land is described by township, range and section. Most of the state is surveyed from the Sixth Principal Meridian; the area around the Wind River Reservation uses the Wind River Meridian. Get the meridian right before you search anything.
2. Find out who got the minerals from the government
Every chain starts with a patent from the United States. Many Wyoming homesteads were patented under the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916, which reserved the minerals to the United States. On that land the minerals are federal no matter who owns the surface, and the leases are issued by the Bureau of Land Management. Patents are in BLM's General Land Office records; federal leases are in its Mineral and Land Records System (MLRS).
Sections 16 and 36 in most townships were granted to the state for its schools. Where the state still holds them, the minerals are leased by the Office of State Lands and Investments.
3. Search the county clerk's records
In Wyoming the county clerk records deeds, leases and everything else, in each of the state's 23 counties. Each filing gets a reception number, and that number is the reference to use: capture it for every document and sort your runsheet by it.
Older documents also carry a book and page, but many counties kept several series of books at once (deeds, photostat books, mining records and others). A book number alone can point to the wrong book. The reception number doesn't have that problem.
Many counties offer an online search for recent decades; older records may be on microfilm or only at the courthouse. Where a county keeps a tract index by legal description, start there, then check the grantor-grantee index for anything the tract index missed.
4. Read the stamp, not just the index
The clerk's recording stamp on the face of each document shows the reception number and the date and time it was filed. Index entries are copied from it, and copies get digits wrong. Take your numbers from the stamp.
5. Check the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
The WOGCC holds well files, spacing units and pooling orders. A pooling application lists the owners the operator found, which is a good check on your runsheet. Its online data tools let you look up wells by location.
We work Wyoming title. Our recent jobs include Converse and Campbell counties. Index runsheets, title runsheets and abstracts at a fixed price, every reception number verified against the recorded document.