THE YELLOW MEDICINE COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Des Moines Lobe setting.
Yellow Medicine County has 759.1 square miles of land in Minnesota. 3 mapped landscape regions meet across Yellow Medicine County: Des Moines Lobe, Prairie Coteau Escarpment, Prairie Coteau.
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
Yellow Medicine County intersects 3 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Des Moines Lobe86.2%
- Prairie Coteau Escarpment10.5%
- Prairie Coteau3.2%
Northern Glaciated Plains in Yellow Medicine County
Flat to gently rolling glacial terrain supports a prairie transition between taller and shorter grasses. Many temporary and seasonal wetlands occupy depressions left in the glacial landscape.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within Yellow Medicine County
The atlas lists 30 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Yellow Medicine County, including Sioux Agency, Stony Run, Oshkosh. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Yellow Medicine County by land and water
The Census records 4.13 square miles of water within Yellow Medicine County, or 0.5% of its total area. That share is close to Yellow Medicine County’s 0.5%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Yellow Medicine County has 21 times the land area of nearby Swede Prairie township (36.2 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Chippewa County, Lac qui Parle County, Lincoln County, Lyon County, Redwood County, Renville County within Minnesota. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

