Indiana

Buying Land in Daviess County, Indiana

Seat Washington, in southwestern Indiana. Daviess County has county-wide zoning -- but that wasn't a given: commissioners came within one vote of repealing it in March 2025, in a debate that turned partly on the county's large Old Order Amish community. That community's genuine size and permanence shapes the county's roads, land patterns, and local politics in ways worth understanding before you buy.

Countywide Zoning -- Recently Reaffirmed by a Split Vote

Generally favorable

Daviess County's Advisory Plan Commission administers a comprehensive zoning ordinance (last major revision May 2020). On March 11, 2025, commissioners voted 2-1 to retain zoning after the Area Plan Commission recommended keeping it 0-7 (one abstention) against repeal. See our dedicated zoning page for what the debate reveals about how zoning actually gets used here.

Indiana's Fourth-Largest Amish Settlement

Case-by-case / verify locally

Centered near Odon and Montgomery, founded 1868. This shapes real, practical land-use facts -- buggy traffic and road-damage costs, a distinct community land-use pattern, and (per 2025 commissioner discussion) a real voice in local zoning debates.

Septic Runs Through a Direct County Health Department

Generally favorable

Daviess County Health Department Environmental Health Services permits septic systems under a 2023 county ordinance plus the statewide ISDH framework.

Zoning: county-wide, and recently reaffirmed rather than assumed permanent

Daviess County has adopted countywide zoning, administered by a nine-member Advisory Plan Commission (APC) that makes recommendations to the Board of Commissioners on rezoning requests and ordinance amendments, with a separate Board of Zoning Appeals handling variances. The county's zoning ordinance was last comprehensively revised on May 26, 2020. That puts Daviess County among the majority of Indiana's 92 counties that has adopted the state's optional IC 36-7-4 planning law -- but, unlike most zoned Indiana counties, Daviess County's zoning status was genuinely contested as recently as 2025, not a settled fact from decades past.

On March 11, 2025, the Board of Commissioners voted 2-1 to retain the county's zoning ordinance rather than repeal it, after the Area Plan Commission had already voted 0-7 (with one abstention) recommending against removal. Commissioners separately voted 3-0 to have staff evaluate bringing zoning and permitting administration in-house by July 1, 2025 -- a governance change distinct from the zoning-repeal question itself. Because this was a real, recently contested vote rather than a long-settled arrangement, see our dedicated zoning page for Daviess County for the specifics of that debate and what it signals about how actively the county's zoning authority gets used.

A large, permanent Amish settlement with real, measurable effects on county infrastructure

Daviess County's Old Order Amish settlement -- centered east of Montgomery and south of Odon, founded in 1868 -- is Indiana's fourth-largest Amish settlement by most counts and among the ten largest in the United States, distinct from the separate, Swiss-founded Amish community centered on Berne and Geneva in Adams County, Indiana. Population estimates vary by source and year, generally running from roughly 4,000 to over 6,000 residents across more than 30 church districts, with the settlement's district count having grown substantially since the early 2000s.

That's not just a demographic fact -- it shows up concretely in the county budget and on county roads. Daviess County issues more than 3,000 horse-and-buggy road permits, and county officials have cited roughly $500,000 a year in horse-related road damage and maintenance costs against a smaller amount collected in permit fees, prompting commissioners to raise the annual buggy permit fee (reported in the $175 range with roughly $50 annual increases planned toward $300). A buyer evaluating a rural Daviess County parcel near the Odon-Montgomery corridor should expect shared-use roads with regular horse-and-buggy traffic as a normal, ongoing feature of the area, not an occasional novelty.

Septic and other departments to know

Septic permitting in Daviess County runs through the Daviess County Health Department's Environmental Health Services division, under County Code Chapter 52 ('On-Site Sewage Disposal System and Installation') and a 2023 septic ordinance (2023-3), layered on top of Indiana's statewide ISDH rule (410 IAC 6-8.3). Staff are available weekdays to walk through site-evaluation and permitting steps for a specific parcel -- worth calling before assuming a rural tract near the county's more densely farmed Amish-settlement area will perc the same way as land elsewhere in the county.

The Daviess County Assessor's office ((812) 254-8660) and the county's GIS mapping platform cover parcel data and valuation, and the County Recorder ((812) 254-8675) holds deeds, easements, and plats. Given the settlement's concentration of working farms, expect a meaningful share of county acreage in and around Odon and Montgomery to be actively farmed by Amish families rather than held for resale -- which can affect how quickly land in that specific area actually reaches the open market compared with other parts of the county.

What we could and couldn't confirm

The March 11, 2025 zoning-retention vote (APC 0-7 with one abstention against repeal; commissioners 2-1 to retain; commissioners 3-0 to evaluate in-house permitting by July 1, 2025) is corroborated across three independent outlets -- Citizen Portal, WAMW-FM local radio, and Indiana Economic Digest -- but direct WebFetch access to citizenportal.ai, wamwamfm.com, indianaeconomicdigest.net, and daviess.org was blocked by a network egress restriction throughout this research pass, so all of this rests on WebSearch-indexed summaries rather than a full verbatim read of any single source; the exact wording of commissioner statements should be treated as paraphrase rather than direct quotation. Amish settlement population figures (roughly 4,000 to 6,000+) vary meaningfully by source and year and were not reconciled to one authoritative current count. The buggy-permit and road-damage figures ($500,000/year in damage, 3,000+ permits, fee rising toward $300) are drawn from a single Washington Times Herald article rather than a county budget document. This research pass specifically confirmed that Daviess County's Amish settlement (founded 1868 near Montgomery) is a distinct community from Adams County, Indiana's Berne/Geneva-centered Swiss-Amish settlement already covered elsewhere on this site, and did not conflate the two.

Verify directly with: the Daviess County Advisory Plan Commission for the zoning ordinance's current status and any further commissioner action since March 2025, and the Daviess County Health Department for septic permitting specifics

Who to Call Before Buying Land in Daviess County

Direct WebFetch access to daviess.org was blocked by a network egress restriction throughout this research pass, so several department details reflect search-indexed content rather than a full verbatim read -- confirm current staff, hours, and fees directly.

Planning & Zoning