THE MARSHALL COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Rolling Loess Prairies setting.
Marshall County has 572.5 square miles of land in Iowa. 3 mapped landscape regions meet across Marshall County: Rolling Loess Prairies, Des Moines Lobe, Eastern Iowa and Minnesota Drift Plains.
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
Marshall County intersects 3 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Rolling Loess Prairies85.5%
- Des Moines Lobe9.6%
- Eastern Iowa and Minnesota Drift Plains4.9%
Finding your parcel within Marshall County
The atlas lists 14 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Marshall County, including Marshalltown, Le Grand, Rhodes. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Marshall County by land and water
The Census records 0.7 square miles of water within Marshall County, or 0.1% of its total area. That share is close to Marshall County’s 0.1%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Marshall County has 29.9 times the land area of nearby Marshalltown city (19.2 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Grundy County, Hardin County, Jasper County, Poweshiek County, Story County, Tama County within Iowa. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

