Zoning in Gibson County, IN: Adopted 2020, Repealed 2021

Gibson County spent years as Indiana's only unzoned county, briefly adopted a comprehensive zoning ordinance, and then reversed course after voters elected commissioners who ran specifically on repealing it. Here's what actually happened, and what it means for land use in the county now.

This page covers what's specific to Gibson County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

From Indiana's only unzoned county to a new ordinance

For years, Gibson County held a distinction no other Indiana county shared: it was the state's only county with no zoning ordinance at all. That changed with a multi-year process -- the county commissioners formally appointed a citizen Area Plan Commission in November 2017, which held public meetings through 2017 and 2018 to gather input, drafted a zoning ordinance that (among other provisions) created a 10-to-11-mile protected radius around a National Weather Service doppler radar site, and ultimately brought a finished ordinance to the commissioners, who unanimously approved it in August 2020.

That approval made Gibson County a zoned county for the first time -- ending its run as Indiana's lone holdout -- and gave it the same basic tools most Indiana counties have: a use-district map, a Board of Zoning Appeals, and a formal variance process for property owners seeking an exception.

The repeal: an election fought directly over zoning

The 2020 ordinance did not last long. In the next county-commissioners election, two candidates ran campaigns built specifically around a promise to repeal the new zoning ordinance if elected -- framing it as an unwanted intrusion on property owners' ability to build without government approval. Both won their races, and once in office they followed through: the Gibson County Commissioners voted 2-1 in early 2021 to repeal the zoning ordinance entirely, with the dissenting commissioner arguing to keep it in place.

This is a genuinely unusual sequence among the roughly dozen Indiana counties that remain unzoned today -- most of those counties simply never adopted zoning under Indiana's optional advisory-planning framework (IC 36-7-4), rather than adopting it and then reversing course through a targeted election. One of the commissioners behind the repeal specifically framed the goal as letting Gibson County residents build on their own property without needing to "jump through hoops," and in place of comprehensive zoning, the county adopted a narrower county-wide licensing requirement -- one that, per contemporaneous reporting, applies only when a property owner wants to install solar panels or wind turbines, leaving ordinary residential and agricultural construction outside any county-level use-district review.

What governs land use in Gibson County today

With comprehensive zoning repealed, Gibson County today functions like most of Indiana's unzoned counties: there's no zoning department, no use-district map, and no variance process for unincorporated land. That doesn't mean land use is entirely unregulated, though -- Indiana's statewide building code still applies to new construction, the county Health Department's septic permitting authority under 410 IAC 6-8.3 is unaffected by the zoning repeal, and any incorporated town within Gibson County that had its own separate municipal zoning before the county's brief 2020-2021 experiment kept that zoning independently of what the county did.

The narrower solar/wind licensing requirement that replaced comprehensive zoning is the one piece of use-specific regulation the county kept -- so if you're evaluating land for a solar lease, a personal wind installation, or any comparable energy project, confirm the license's current requirements and fee directly with the Gibson County Commissioners before proceeding, since this research pass could not confirm its exact current text. For anyone buying ordinary rural acreage for a home, an agricultural building, or a hobby farm, the practical upshot of Gibson County's zoning history is that you have more flexibility than in a zoned Indiana county -- and correspondingly less protection against what a neighboring landowner might build next to you, since there's no use-district map keeping incompatible uses apart.

Zoning in Gibson County, Indiana: Adopted in 2020, Repealed in 2021 -- Why the County Is Unzoned Today

From Indiana's only unzoned county to a new ordinance

The repeal: an election fought directly over zoning

What governs land use in Gibson County today

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