THE COOK COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Boundary Lakes and Hills setting.
Cook County has 1,452.6 square miles of land in Minnesota. 2 mapped landscape regions meet across Cook County: Boundary Lakes and Hills, North Shore Highlands.
Glacial hills, till plains, sandy outwash and old lake basins create a varied northern landscape. Conifer and hardwood forests surround many lakes across these glacially shaped uplands.
Regional context: Northern Lakes and Forests ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Cook County intersects 2 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Boundary Lakes and Hills67.5%
- North Shore Highlands32.5%
Finding your parcel within Cook County
The atlas lists 5 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Cook County, including Tofte, Schroeder, Lutsen. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Cook County by land and water
The Census records 1,887.2 square miles of water within Cook County, or 56.5% of its total area. That share is close to Cook County’s 56.5%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Cook County has 14.8 times the land area of nearby Lutsen township (98.4 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Lake County within Minnesota. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

