Buying Land in Union County, New Mexico

Zoning status here is a genuine research gap -- verify directly before assuming either way

Union County's own published ordinance listing did not turn up a distinct, comprehensive zoning ordinance comparable to what's documented for neighboring Torrance County (Ordinance 1990-01, actively administered by a Planning & Zoning Department) or Taos County (Ordinance 2003-1 and the 2018 Land Use Regulations). That absence is a real signal, but we're not treating it as a confirmed 'no zoning' finding the way we can for Sierra County, whose own 2017 Comprehensive Plan states directly that the county has no zoning ordinance -- Union County's online records simply aren't as complete or searchable, so we can't rule a zoning ordinance out with the same confidence.

On building permits specifically: New Mexico's general pattern is that the state Construction Industries Division (CID) serves as the default permitting authority for unincorporated land in a county that hasn't adopted its own certified local enforcement program, while some counties (Torrance among them) run their own building-permit process instead. We could not confirm which pattern applies in Union County. Before you build, confirm directly with the County Clerk's office whether the county issues its own building or zoning permits, or whether you need to go through CID instead -- and ask the same question about any zoning status, since the honest answer here is that the public record didn't settle it.

A working ranching and dryland-farming county, not a subdivision market

Union County was created in 1893 out of three existing counties and has long been a leading New Mexico cattle-ranching region; cow-calf and stocker operations, alongside productive irrigated and dryland farms, remain the backbone of the local economy, with Clayton -- the county seat -- serving as the hub for grain elevators, livestock auctions, and agricultural supply services. The county's population reflects that working-land character: about 4,079 residents at the 2020 census, among the smallest counts of any New Mexico county, down substantially from a peak of more than 20,000 across a larger number of small communities in the early 20th century.

For a buyer, the practical implication is that Union County land is priced and used as production agriculture -- expect large-acreage working ranch and farm parcels rather than a developed rural-residential market, and expect that basic services like a dedicated planning department, GIS parcel viewer, or agricultural extension line may be thinner or harder to find online here than in a larger New Mexico county, simply because there's less land-use administration infrastructure to support a small population.

The Kiowa National Grassland: real federal land in the county's east

The smaller, eastern unit of the Kiowa National Grassland -- roughly 137,000 acres -- sits in eastern Union County near the Oklahoma and Texas borders, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. National grasslands were generally assembled from marginal homestead-era farmland the federal government reacquired starting in the 1930s, and they're commonly intermixed with private inholdings in a checkerboard-style pattern rather than forming one contiguous federal block. If a parcel you're evaluating borders or sits near the grassland, don't assume it has public-road frontage or unrestricted access across adjacent federal land just because the grassland is nearby -- confirm actual legal access, easements, and fencing obligations with a current survey and title work, and check road status directly with the Forest Service's local ranger district.