THE SPOKANE COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Channeled Scablands setting.
Spokane County has 1,764.2 square miles of land in Washington. 7 mapped landscape regions meet across Spokane County: Channeled Scablands, Spokane Valley Outwash Plains, Palouse Hills, 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
Spokane County intersects 7 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Channeled Scablands32.8%
- Spokane Valley Outwash Plains27.4%
- Palouse Hills18.9%
- Western Selkirk Maritime Forest7.4%
- Northern Idaho Hills and Low Relief Mountains6.4%
Northern Rockies in Spokane County
The Northern Rockies contain rugged ranges, glacial lakes and mixed conifer forests. Moist Pacific influences reach some inland valleys, producing forest communities unlike the drier mountain regions farther south.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within Spokane County
The atlas lists 21 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Spokane County, including Spokane, Spokane Valley, Otis Orchards-East Farms. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Spokane County by land and water
The Census records 16.8 square miles of water within Spokane County, or 0.9% of its total area. That share is close to Spokane County’s 0.9%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Spokane County has 25.7 times the land area of nearby Spokane city (68.8 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Lincoln County, Pend Oreille County, Stevens County, Whitman County within Washington. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

