THE UNION COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Glaciated Triassic Lowlands setting.
Union County has 102.8 square miles of land in New Jersey. 5 mapped landscape regions meet across Union County: Glaciated Triassic Lowlands, Trap Rock and Conglomerate Uplands, Hackensack Meadowlands, among others.
Rounded low hills, open valleys and irregular plains form a transition between Appalachian highlands and the coastal plain. The underlying geology mixes metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary rocks.
Regional context: Northern Piedmont ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Union County intersects 5 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Glaciated Triassic Lowlands60.9%
- Trap Rock and Conglomerate Uplands12.8%
- Hackensack Meadowlands12.3%
- Triassic Lowlands7.1%
- Passaic Basin Freshwater Wetlands6.9%
Finding your parcel within Union County
The atlas lists 27 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Union County, including Elizabeth, Linden, Union. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Union County by land and water
The Census records 2.64 square miles of water within Union County, or 2.5% of its total area. That share is close to Union County’s 2.5%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Union County has 21.3 times the land area of nearby Cranford township (4.84 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Essex County, Hudson County, Middlesex County, Morris County, Somerset County within New Jersey. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.