THE HARDIN COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Southern Shawnee Hills setting.
Hardin County has 177.4 square miles of land in Illinois. 3 mapped landscape regions meet across Hardin County: Southern Shawnee Hills, Northern Shawnee Hills, Wabash-Ohio Bottomlands.
Open hills, irregular plains and tablelands are developed on limestone and other sedimentary rocks. Oak-hickory woodland, local prairie and cedar-glade settings contribute to this diverse inland plateau.
Regional context: Interior Plateau ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Hardin County intersects 3 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Southern Shawnee Hills80.8%
- Northern Shawnee Hills12.4%
- Wabash-Ohio Bottomlands6.8%
Interior River Valleys and Hills in Hardin County
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.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within Hardin County
The atlas lists 3 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Hardin County, including Rosiclare, Elizabethtown, Cave-In-Rock. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Hardin County by land and water
The Census records 4.05 square miles of water within Hardin County, or 2.2% of its total area. That share is close to Hardin County’s 2.2%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Hardin County has 251.6 times the land area of nearby Elizabethtown village (0.71 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Gallatin County, Pope County, Saline County within Illinois. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

