THE GILLIAM COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Umatilla Plateau setting.
Gilliam County has 1,204.7 square miles of land in Oregon. 4 mapped landscape regions meet across Gilliam County: Umatilla Plateau, Pleistocene Lake Basins, Deschutes/John Day Canyons, among others.
Basalt underlies this dry plateau of grassland and sagebrush. Windblown soils cover some uplands, while ancient flood paths exposed rock across the region's scabland terrain.
Regional context: Columbia Plateau ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Gilliam County intersects 4 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Umatilla Plateau49.5%
- Pleistocene Lake Basins22.7%
- Deschutes/John Day Canyons20.7%
- Umatilla Dissected Uplands7.1%
Finding your parcel within Gilliam County
The atlas lists 3 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Gilliam County, including Arlington, Lonerock, Condon. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Gilliam County by land and water
The Census records 18.1 square miles of water within Gilliam County, or 1.5% of its total area. That share is close to Gilliam County’s 1.5%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Gilliam County has 1,494.7 times the land area of nearby Condon city (0.81 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Morrow County, Sherman County, Wasco County, Wheeler County within Oregon. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

