THE HANCOCK COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Western Dissected Illinoian Till Plain setting.
Hancock County has 793.7 square miles of land in Illinois. 3 mapped landscape regions meet across Hancock County: Western Dissected Illinoian Till Plain, River Hills, Upper Mississippi Alluvial Plain.
Broad terraced river valleys contrast with wooded slopes and dissected glacial plains. Bottomland settings and upland oak landscapes occur close together across the Interior River Valleys and Hills.
Regional context: Interior River Valleys and Hills ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Hancock County intersects 3 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Western Dissected Illinoian Till Plain79.9%
- River Hills13.5%
- Upper Mississippi Alluvial Plain6.6%
Finding your parcel within Hancock County
The atlas lists 39 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Hancock County, including Rocky Run-Wilcox, Carthage, Hancock. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Hancock County by land and water
The Census records 20.7 square miles of water within Hancock County, or 2.5% of its total area. That share is close to Hancock County’s 2.5%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Hancock County has 24 times the land area of nearby Prairie township (33.1 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Adams County, Henderson County, McDonough County, Schuyler County within Illinois. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.