THE DUBUQUE COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Blufflands and Coulees setting.
Dubuque County has 608.3 square miles of land in Iowa. 3 mapped landscape regions meet across Dubuque County: Blufflands and Coulees, Rolling Loess Prairies, Eastern Iowa and Minnesota Drift Plains.
Deeply cut valleys divide a bedrock plateau with windblown soil on many uplands. Glaciers had less influence here than in neighboring regions, leaving a distinctly hilly landscape.
Regional context: Driftless Area ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Dubuque County intersects 3 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Blufflands and Coulees56.7%
- Rolling Loess Prairies25.1%
- Eastern Iowa and Minnesota Drift Plains18.2%
Western Corn Belt Plains in Dubuque County
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.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within Dubuque County
The atlas lists 21 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Dubuque County, including Dubuque, Dyersville, Asbury. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Dubuque County by land and water
The Census records 8.16 square miles of water within Dubuque County, or 1.3% of its total area. That share is close to Dubuque County’s 1.3%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Dubuque County has 4,573.7 times the land area of nearby Graf city (0.13 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Clayton County, Delaware County, Jackson County, Jones County within Iowa. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

