Buying Land in Eddy County, North Dakota

A real, actively-amended zoning ordinance -- don't assume 'small county' means 'unzoned'

It would be easy to assume a county this small and this sparsely populated has never bothered with zoning -- that pattern is real in parts of rural North Dakota, per the state hub. Eddy County is a documented exception: its Zoning Ordinance was originally adopted March 21, 2017, and has since been amended repeatedly and recently -- documented amendments include May 2, 2017, May 1, 2018, August 1, 2023, November 18, 2024, and August 4, 2025. That amendment cadence is itself informative: this is a code the county's Zoning Commission and Board of Commissioners actively revisit, not a document adopted once and left untouched for a decade. Get the current version and confirm which amendment applies to your parcel's district and permitted uses -- a provision you find online may already have been superseded.

The smallest county by land area, and one of the least populous: what that means for you as a buyer

Eddy County is North Dakota's smallest county by land area, at roughly 630 square miles, and one of its least populous, with a 2020 Census population of 2,347 -- smaller than many single towns elsewhere in the country. New Rockford, the county seat, itself has a population in the low thousands. This isn't a regulatory fact, but it's a practical one worth planning around: county offices here tend to be small, staff often wear multiple hats, and getting an in-person meeting or a same-day answer on a zoning or permitting question may take more advance scheduling than in a larger county. It also means the county's zoning board and commission are a small, identifiable group of local people rather than a large bureaucracy -- worth knowing if you plan to attend a hearing or request a variance.

None of this changes the substance of the state-level water-law or agricultural framework covered on the North Dakota hub, which applies here as it does statewide. What it does mean is that verifying anything specific to a parcel -- zoning district, recent amendment status, or a septic referral -- benefits from calling ahead and being patient about turnaround time, rather than expecting the responsiveness of a larger county's dedicated planning department.

The county's small tax base is also worth keeping in mind if a parcel's value depends on nearby public infrastructure or services -- road maintenance, snow removal on rural routes, and similar county-funded work tend to stretch further in a larger, better-staffed county than in one this size. None of that makes Eddy County a worse place to buy land, but it's a different operating environment than a populous county, and worth factoring into how quickly you can expect answers or improvements once you own land here.