Buying Land in Dubois County, Indiana

Zoning: the county doesn't have it yet, and is actively deciding whether to

This is the single most important fact for anyone buying unincorporated land in Dubois County: there is currently no county-wide zoning ordinance and no county plan commission. That puts Dubois squarely in the minority described by Indiana's own state framework -- roughly a fifth of Indiana's 92 counties have never adopted county-wide zoning -- and it means there is no use-district map, no zoning administrator, and no variance process to check for land outside the three incorporated towns. Subdivision control, building permits, and health-department septic rules still apply regardless.

That may not stay true. The county commissioners hired the planning firm American Structurepoint to draft a comprehensive plan -- Indiana's statutory prerequisite before any county can adopt zoning, even though completing a comprehensive plan doesn't obligate a county to zone afterward. A first public survey drew more than 1,000 responses, a second round of outreach was underway as of this research pass, and the plan was scheduled to reach a steering committee around August 2026. If you're buying land here with a multi-year horizon, it's worth asking the county directly where that process stands, since a future zoning ordinance -- if adopted -- would be a genuine change from today's baseline.

Jasper, Huntingburg, and Ferdinand are the exception to all of this: each town already has its own plan commission, zoning ordinance, and subdivision regulations, and each extends extraterritorial jurisdiction into some of the unincorporated land around it. A parcel that looks rural on a map can still fall inside one of these three jurisdictions -- confirm with the relevant town's planning office, not just the county, before assuming a Dubois County parcel is zoning-free.

Solar is the one thing the county has regulated -- and it's currently paused

Despite having no general zoning, Dubois County carved out a standalone Commercial Solar Energy Systems ordinance in 2023 -- evidence that solar development pressure arrived here well before the broader comprehensive-plan process did. The county then moved twice to slow things down further: a 36-month moratorium on tax abatements for commercial solar and other alternative-energy projects (Ordinance 2024-16, adopted October 2024), and a more direct strategic moratorium on filing or processing new commercial/large-scale solar applications in unincorporated areas (Ordinance 2025-16), running from December 15, 2025 through December 15, 2026 while a technical review committee works out revised siting standards. Projects that already hold valid county permits are exempted from the newer pause.

The immediate trigger for a lot of this is AES's Crossvine Solar project near Holland, which includes an 85 megawatt battery energy storage system. Residents living near the proposed BESS site raised organized fire-safety concerns in early 2026, citing lithium-battery fire incidents elsewhere in the country and the lack of a local evacuation plan, while county commissioners have noted that state law limits how much local authority actually exists to block a permitted project outright. A Comprehensive Plan survey found 37% of respondents want the county to discourage solar development against just 7% who strongly support it -- a real split worth knowing about if you're evaluating land near a proposed site or weighing a lease offer of your own. See our dedicated wind and solar leasing page for Dubois County for the fuller story.

A furniture-manufacturing economy that shapes land use around Jasper

Dubois County's German-Catholic settlers arrived in 1818 drawn by dense hardwood forests, and by 1876 that timber access -- combined with Ohio River transport to the south -- had grown into a furniture-manufacturing base that never really left: Jasper Seating Company (part of the Jasper Group), Indiana Furniture, Kimball International, OFS Brands, MasterBrand Cabinets, and Best Home Furnishings all still operate here, and eight Dubois County wood manufacturers ranked among the largest in North America as of a 2023 industry analysis. That's a genuinely distinctive regional economy, and it's part of why industrial and commercial land near Jasper and Huntingburg carries real development demand even though the surrounding countryside remains largely agricultural and, as noted above, unzoned.

Septic, wells, and who to call

Septic permitting runs through the Dubois County Health Department (1187 South St. Charles St., Jasper; (812) 481-7055), which has required permits for new systems since 1978 under county ordinance 2023-17 and the statewide 410 IAC 6-8.3 rule. A certified soil scientist must evaluate the site before an installer -- who must separately hold the county's own installer permit -- submits system plans for health-department review and field verification. Any pre-1978 system without a permit on record may be treated as an illegal system subject to a health-department order to update it, which is worth checking on an older rural property before you close.