Buying Land in Adams County, North Dakota

Zoning exists here -- administered out of the Tax Equalization office, not a standalone planning department

The state hub notes that North Dakota county zoning is discretionary, not automatic, and varies county by county. Adams County is one that has adopted it: Chapter 6 of the county code, "Zoning and Planning," establishes a Planning and Zoning Board that reviews applications and makes recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners, which holds final authority. In practice, day-to-day administration -- building permits, conditional use permits, and zoning variance requests -- runs through the county's Tax Equalization Department rather than a separate planning office, a common pattern in small rural North Dakota counties where one office wears several hats.

The ordinance's stated purpose draws on the county's Comprehensive Plan and North Dakota's county zoning statute, and it explicitly carves out an exemption: the ordinance does not prohibit or restrict the use of land or buildings for farming or any of the normal incidents of farming. That exemption matters in a county where agriculture dominates land use, but it does not mean every non-farm use, subdivision, or structure is unregulated -- confirm the applicable zoning district and any permit requirement directly with the Tax Equalization office before assuming a specific use is allowed.

A small ranching and farming economy, largely outside the Bakken oil core

Adams County covers roughly 988 square miles of rolling plains and badlands terrain in the state's far southwest corner, bordering South Dakota. At about 2,200 residents as of the 2020 census, it's one of North Dakota's least populous counties, and farmland and ranch property account for the majority of the county's assessed property value. The leading employment sectors among residents -- health care and social assistance, agriculture/forestry/fishing/hunting, and construction -- reflect a small, service-and-ranching economy rather than an active development market.

Adams County also sits well outside the productive core of the Bakken/Three Forks play that dominates the severed-mineral discussion on the state hub. Documented well records show only a modest number of wells -- on the order of a dozen -- drilled in the county going back to the mid-1990s, a fraction of what core-play counties like McKenzie or Mountrail have seen. That doesn't mean mineral history is irrelevant here (a full title search is still worth doing for any parcel, and older, non-Bakken-era severances are still possible), but it does mean a buyer shouldn't expect the same intensity of active leasing, drilling, or surface-use conflict that defines land buying farther north and west in the state.

Septic runs through a shared, multi-county health unit -- not a county office

As the state hub explains, septic permitting in North Dakota currently runs through a mix of state standards and local public health units, and Adams County is one of eight counties (alongside Billings, Bowman, Dunn, Golden Valley, Hettinger, Slope, and Stark) served by the Southwestern District Health Unit, headquartered in Dickinson rather than in Hettinger. That means a septic permit application, site evaluation, and inspection for Adams County land goes to a regional office outside the county, not a dedicated Adams County department -- worth knowing before you assume "call the county" covers septic the way it does zoning.