THE OLIVER COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Missouri Plateau setting.
Oliver County has 722.4 square miles of land in North Dakota. 2 mapped landscape regions meet across Oliver County: Missouri Plateau, River Breaks.
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
Oliver County intersects 2 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Missouri Plateau71%
- River Breaks29%
Finding your parcel within Oliver County
The atlas lists 1 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Oliver County, including Center. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Oliver County by land and water
The Census records 8.68 square miles of water within Oliver County, or 1.2% of its total area. That share is close to Oliver County’s 1.2%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Oliver County has 1,511.3 times the land area of nearby Center city (0.48 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Burleigh County, McLean County, Mercer County, Morton County within North Dakota. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

