Massachusetts
Buying Land in Hampshire County, Massachusetts
Hampshire County's own government was abolished on January 1, 1999, so there is no county planning department, no county zoning board, and no county building department to call. What you actually get here is two very different land-buying worlds inside one county line: the dense, college-driven towns of the Pioneer Valley (Amherst, Northampton) and a ring of small, genuinely rural hill towns to the west (Worthington, Chesterfield, Cummington, and neighbors).
Why there is no Hampshire County government to call
Hampshire County's government was formally abolished effective January 1, 1999, one of eight Massachusetts counties dissolved by the Legislature between 1997 and 2000 under MGL Chapter 34B. Ahead of that formal date, the county's jail and house of correction, and its Registry of Deeds operations, were transferred to the Commonwealth effective September 1, 1998. There is no Hampshire County Commission, no county executive, no county planning department, and no county building department -- there simply is no county-level government left to hold any of those roles.
A few functions survive in a state-administered form rather than disappearing outright. Registers of Deeds are still locally elected officials, but the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office now administers the Registry's budget and operations. The county sheriff remains an elected, county-wide office, but the house of correction the sheriff oversees is managed under the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, not by any county government. Separately, the Hampshire Council of Governments (HCOG) is a voluntary regional association of member cities and towns that coordinates services like roadway maintenance, cooperative purchasing, and building-code coordination -- a genuinely useful regional body, but not a government, and not a source of zoning or permitting authority. For anything touching what you can build, subdivide, or use a parcel for, the town is the only real answer.
The Five College towns and the western hill towns are different markets
Hampshire County had 162,308 residents at the 2020 Census across 527.2 square miles of land, the 8th-largest county in Massachusetts by area. Much of its population and development pressure concentrates in the Pioneer Valley's "Five College" towns -- principally Amherst and Northampton -- anchored by UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Smith College, and Mount Holyoke College. These towns carry real institutional influence over local land use: student-housing demand, campus-adjacent zoning questions, and town-meeting politics shaped by a large college-affiliated population. One live example: Amherst has an active zoning study underway for the former Hampshire College campus following the college's announced closure of academic operations after December 2026 -- a genuinely open, town-specific land-use question rather than a settled fact, and worth checking directly with Amherst's planning office for current status on any nearby or adjacent parcel.
West of the Pioneer Valley, Hampshire County's character changes completely. Small hill towns like Worthington, Chesterfield, Cummington, Goshen, Plainfield, Middlefield, and Westhampton sit in the Berkshire foothills, some with populations in the hundreds, and carry a genuinely rural, low-density zoning and land-use pattern -- larger minimum lot sizes, agricultural and forestry uses, and far less development pressure than the college towns 20 miles east. A buyer evaluating raw or rural acreage in Hampshire County should treat these as functionally different land markets inside the same county line, and should never assume a zoning pattern from one applies to the other.
The Quabbin Reservoir watershed reaches into eastern Hampshire County
Hampshire County has a direct historical connection to the Quabbin Reservoir, Massachusetts's largest inland body of water and the water-supply source for greater Boston. The towns of Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott were all in Hampshire County before they were disincorporated and flooded in the 1930s to create the reservoir; their remaining land, and their former residents, were redistributed into surrounding Hampshire towns, principally Belchertown, Pelham, and Ware. Those three towns still border the reservoir today.
For a land buyer, this history carries a present-day, practical consequence: land inside the state-mapped Quabbin and Ware River watershed area is subject to the Massachusetts Watershed Protection Act (WsPA), administered by the Department of Conservation and Recreation's Division of Water Supply Protection, which can restrict development, land-clearing, and certain uses on affected parcels well beyond whatever the underlying town zoning allows. This is a separate, state-administered layer on top of ordinary town zoning -- not a town-level rule -- and it is not visible on a standard zoning map. Anyone considering a parcel in or near Belchertown, Pelham, or Ware, or any other Hampshire town bordering the reservoir, should confirm the parcel's watershed-boundary status directly with DCR before assuming ordinary town zoning is the only constraint in play.
Who to Call Before Buying Land in Hampshire County
Hampshire County's government was abolished effective January 1, 1999 -- there is no county planning_zoning or building_permitting office to list, and none is invented here. Zoning, permitted uses, subdivision rules, and building permits are set and issued entirely by the specific city or town (e.g., Amherst, Northampton, Belchertown, Worthington); contact that town's building or planning office directly. Septic permitting (Title 5) and wetlands review (Conservation Commission) are likewise town functions -- see the Massachusetts state page for the statewide framework both operate under.
Recorder / Clerk / Land Records
Hampshire County Registry of Deeds
Recorded deeds, easements, mortgages, and plats for Hampshire County parcels -- locally elected Register of Deeds, budget administered by the Secretary of the Commonwealth since the county's 1999 abolition.
Other
Hampshire Council of Governments (HCOG)
A voluntary regional association of Hampshire County cities and towns coordinating services like roadway maintenance, cooperative purchasing, and building-code guidance -- NOT a zoning or land-use permitting authority.
Other
DCR Division of Water Supply Protection
Confirming whether a specific parcel near the Quabbin Reservoir or Ware River falls inside the mapped Watershed Protection Act boundary, which can restrict development beyond ordinary town zoning.
Want to know if this specific parcel actually works?
Tell us what you're looking at and we'll connect you with a local land specialist who can help you sanity-check it before you go further.
Get local guidanceSources
- Hampshire County, Massachusetts — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09)
- General Laws, Part I, Title VI, Chapter 34B, Section 1 — Massachusetts General Court (accessed 2026-09)
- County Government — Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth (accessed 2026-09)
- Why were half of MA's county governments abolished in the 1990s? — Boston.com ("Wickedpedia") (accessed 2026-09)
- Hampshire Council of Governments — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09)
- Towns of the Pioneer Valley — Pioneer Valley (regional tourism/planning site) (accessed 2026-09)
- Update: Hampshire Campus Zoning Study — Town of Amherst, MA (accessed 2026-09)
- Quabbin Reservoir — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09)
- Quabbin–Swift River Valley — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09)
- Watershed Protection Act — Mass.gov (accessed 2026-09)
- Find a Registry of Deeds Office — Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth (accessed 2026-09)
Last reviewed 2026-09