THE MCCONE COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Missouri Plateau setting.
McCone County has 2,642.2 square miles of land in Montana. 5 mapped landscape regions meet across McCone County: Missouri Plateau, Montana Central Grasslands, Glaciated Dark Brown Prairie, among others.
Rolling semiarid plains are punctuated by buttes, badlands and river breaks. Much of the regional terrain developed on sandstone, siltstone and shale without the leveling influence of continental glaciers.
Regional context: Northwestern Great Plains ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
McCone County intersects 5 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Missouri Plateau26.7%
- Montana Central Grasslands25.7%
- Glaciated Dark Brown Prairie22.4%
- River Breaks12.6%
- Glaciated Northern Grasslands12.5%
Northwestern Glaciated Plains in McCone County
Glaciated plains bridge the wetter eastern prairie and the drier, more broken Great Plains. Numerous prairie potholes and other seasonal or persistent wetlands are characteristic regional landforms.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within McCone County
The atlas lists 4 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with McCone County, including Circle, Brockway, Prairie Elk Colony. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
McCone County by land and water
The Census records 39.8 square miles of water within McCone County, or 1.5% of its total area. That share is close to McCone County’s 1.5%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, McCone County has 3,378.8 times the land area of nearby Circle town (0.78 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Dawson County, Garfield County, Prairie County, Richland County, Roosevelt County, Valley County within Montana. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

