THE HANOVER COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Rolling Coastal Plain setting.
Hanover County has 467.6 square miles of land in Virginia. 2 mapped landscape regions meet across Hanover County: Rolling Coastal Plain, Northern Outer Piedmont.
Irregular plains of sand, silt and clay support a mix of pine and hardwood landscapes. The region has more relief than the lower coastal plain, with generally gentle stream gradients.
Regional context: Southeastern Plains ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Hanover County intersects 2 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Rolling Coastal Plain52.6%
- Northern Outer Piedmont47.4%
Piedmont in Hanover County
The Piedmont is a belt of irregular plains and hills between the Appalachians and the coastal plain. A complex mixture of older rocks underlies its pine and hardwood woodland landscapes.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within Hanover County
The atlas lists 3 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Hanover County, including Mechanicsville, Ashland, Hanover. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Hanover County by land and water
The Census records 4.9 square miles of water within Hanover County, or 1% of its total area. That share is close to Hanover County’s 1%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Hanover County has 65 times the land area of nearby Ashland town (7.2 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Caroline County, Goochland County, Henrico County, King William County, Louisa County, New Kent County, Spotsylvania County within Virginia. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

