I believe that title companies generally maintain records dating back to the original land transfer. I called a title company a few months back in Ouachita County and confirmed that their records do go back that far and are independent of the loss of records at the courthouse. Generally I think (not sure) that these records are indexed by property description only, section, township, and range, I suppose. Probably not feasible to try to locate records by name of owner. Also, I don't know about the cost range. But for those who have a specific property in mind, when courthouse records are lost, checking with a title company might be one possible option.