Researching a property's history

[Sam Leon]

Not sure that there is an appropriate forum for this question so here goes.

I bought a property several months back, a Fannie Mae REO and property has been abandoned since 2011 with a heavy code enforcement lien on it which comes as a title exception.

To make a long story short, I need to dig up as much old plans, permits and records about the property as possible to answer a bunch of questions.  The city has none - they don't keep permit information older than 10 years...nuts.

What I am wondering is, is there a way to find out if a particular property in a particular city may have been part of the unincorporated county or another city for a period of time?  An annexation history if you will...for example, may be it wasn't annexed until 1995 and so prior to that it belonged somewhere else and there is a chance old records exist elsewhere.

Also, let's say it does belong to the unincorporated county in say 1974, where is a good place to look up zoning and building codes during 1974, in order to determine if something would have been legal and conforming back then?  Do county and city building services keep old old code books?  I don't think any of this is online, I looked.