Buying Land in Putnam County, Missouri

Why "no county zoning" is not the whole story in Putnam County

Putnam County has never adopted county-wide planning and zoning under RSMo Chapter 64, which puts it in the same broad category as most rural Missouri counties. But Putnam is also one of Missouri's township organization counties -- a distinct constitutional and statutory structure (Chapter 65 RSMo) used mostly in the state's northern tier, where individual townships within the county hold certain governmental powers of their own, separate from the county commission. One of those powers is planning and zoning: under Chapter 65, a township can adopt its own zoning with voter approval, provided the county itself hasn't already adopted county-wide zoning (which would preempt it).

Putnam County has eleven townships -- Elm, Grant, Jackson, Liberty, Lincoln, Medicine, Richland, Sherman, Union, Wilson, and York -- and, per the Putnam County Assessor's own published guidance, only three of them (Lincoln, Sherman, and York) have actually adopted township zoning. The other eight, including Union Township, have not. That means the honest answer to "is this parcel zoned" in Putnam County is never just yes or no at the county level -- it depends on which of the eleven townships the parcel sits in, and the county's own township-boundary maps (available through the Assessor and County Clerk) are the starting point for figuring that out.

This also means Putnam County land-use questions route through more than one office depending on location: for a parcel in Lincoln, Sherman, or York Township, the relevant zoning contact is the township itself (typically reached through its township board or trustee) rather than the county; for the other eight townships, there's effectively no zoning authority at all and the County Commission is the closest thing to a land-use contact. See our dedicated zoning page for Putnam County for a fuller breakdown of what township zoning can and can't regulate, and why the University of Missouri Extension's own township-law guidance flags real limits on what a township code can reach.

Septic, wells, and floodplain: the standard rural-Missouri framework

Onsite wastewater treatment system (septic) permits for Putnam County are handled by the Putnam County Health Department (103 N. 18th St., Unionville, MO 63565; 660-947-2429), which is contracted by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to provide on-site sewage inspections and technical advice on system construction -- the standard OWTS arrangement (Chapter 701 RSMo) used across most of rural Missouri, regardless of whether a given township has adopted zoning. Private wells are governed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' statewide well-construction rules and certified-contractor program rather than a separate county or township permit.

Floodplain administration and emergency management run through the county's emergency management office rather than a planning department, consistent with a county that has no zoning department of its own. Locust Creek, a tributary of the Grand River, runs through the county and passes under US Route 136 west of Unionville; confirm flood-zone status for any parcel near it or the county's other waterways through the FEMA Flood Map Service Center and the county's floodplain administrator before building.

A cattle and row-crop county with real recreational and timber tracts

Agriculture is the core of Putnam County's economy, with farms running cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and hogs alongside row crops, and enough working timber ground (locust and other hardwoods lining Locust Creek and elsewhere in the county) that recreational listings routinely advertise stands of 200-300+ acres of timber alongside pasture. The 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture put the total market value of agricultural products sold in the county at roughly $127.6 million, with crop sales alone accounting for about $42.5 million of that -- a meaningful agricultural base for a county of Putnam's size, and most of the farm operations here fall in the 50-to-500-acre range rather than at either extreme.

That working-land base supports a real market in recreational and hunting land as well, with stocked ponds, duck-hunting draws, and mixed timber-and-pasture tracts showing up regularly among land listings in the county. Because so little of the county carries any zoning at all (and even the three zoned townships can't reach crop, orchard, forestry, or farm-building uses), a buyer's practical due diligence here leans more heavily on private title and easement review, floodplain status, and township boundaries than on navigating a zoning process -- which is a genuinely different profile than a fully zoned Missouri county, and different in its own way from the simple "no zoning anywhere" story that describes most of the state's non-zoned counties.