THE PEMBINA COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Glacial Lake Agassiz Basin setting.
Pembina County has 1,118.5 square miles of land in North Dakota. 3 mapped landscape regions meet across Pembina County: Glacial Lake Agassiz Basin, Beach Ridges and Sand Deltas, Pembina Escarpment.
The former bed of glacial Lake Agassiz forms an exceptionally flat plain in the Red River valley. Thick lake sediments overlie older glacial deposits across this historic prairie landscape.
Regional context: Lake Agassiz Plain ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Pembina County intersects 3 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Glacial Lake Agassiz Basin77.9%
- Beach Ridges and Sand Deltas20.2%
- Pembina Escarpment1.9%
Northern Glaciated Plains in Pembina 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 Pembina County
The atlas lists 35 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Pembina County, including St. Thomas, Carlisle, Cavalier. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Pembina County by land and water
The Census records 2.71 square miles of water within Pembina County, or 0.2% of its total area. That share is close to Pembina County’s 0.2%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Pembina County has 25.1 times the land area of nearby Hamilton township (44.6 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Cavalier County, Walsh County within North Dakota. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

