THE DICKINSON COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Des Moines Lobe setting.
Dickinson County has 380.5 square miles of land in Iowa. 2 mapped landscape regions meet across Dickinson County: Des Moines Lobe, Loess Prairies.
Glacial till plains and windblown loess hills make up the Western Corn Belt landscape. Near-level and rolling terrain are interspersed with steeper river valleys and hills.
Regional context: Western Corn Belt Plains ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Dickinson County intersects 2 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Des Moines Lobe94.4%
- Loess Prairies5.6%
Finding your parcel within Dickinson County
The atlas lists 10 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Dickinson County, including Spirit Lake, Milford, Arnolds Park. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Dickinson County by land and water
The Census records 23.4 square miles of water within Dickinson County, or 5.8% of its total area. That share is close to Dickinson County’s 5.8%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Dickinson County has 317.6 times the land area of nearby Wahpeton city (1.2 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Clay County, Emmet County, O'Brien County, Osceola County, Palo Alto County within Iowa. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

