THE MCLEAN COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Missouri Coteau Slope setting.
McLean County has 2,110.3 square miles of land in North Dakota. 5 mapped landscape regions meet across McLean County: Missouri Coteau Slope, Missouri Coteau, River Breaks, among others.
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.
Regional context: Northwestern Glaciated Plains ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
McLean County intersects 5 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Missouri Coteau Slope50.4%
- Missouri Coteau33.2%
- River Breaks10.6%
- Collapsed Glacial Outwash4.4%
- Drift Plains1.4%
Northwestern Great Plains in McLean County
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.
Read the regional source ↗Northern Glaciated Plains in McLean 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 McLean County
The atlas lists 40 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with McLean County, including Longfellow, Deepwater, Greatstone. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
McLean County by land and water
The Census records 217.7 square miles of water within McLean County, or 9.4% of its total area. That share is close to McLean County’s 9.4%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, McLean County has 63.5 times the land area of nearby St. Mary township (33.2 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Burleigh County, Dunn County, McHenry County, Mercer County, Mountrail County, Oliver County, Sheridan County, Ward County within North Dakota. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

