Buying Land in McCook County, South Dakota

A working zoning and permitting office

McCook County has a real, functioning Planning & Zoning department -- a genuine exception to the pattern the South Dakota state hub describes, where a meaningful share of rural counties have never adopted zoning at all. The office issues building permits and 911 addresses and processes applications for plats, conditional-use permits, and variances, with the county Planning Board and Board of Commissioners meeting on a regular second-and-fourth-Tuesday schedule to act on them. For a buyer, that means a specific McCook County parcel genuinely sits in a defined zoning district with an actual review process behind any proposed subdivision or change of use, rather than the ad hoc handling common in unzoned counties. We could not pin down the exact year the underlying ordinance was first adopted from public sources reviewed, so confirm the ordinance's current text, the parcel's district, and any pending amendments directly with the office before relying on assumptions about what's allowed.

A rural county riding the edge of the Sioux Falls growth corridor

McCook County's defining geographic fact is its position on Interstate 90 between Sioux Falls and Mitchell, South Dakota's largest and sixth-largest cities respectively, with the county seat of Salem sitting at the crossroads of US Highway 81 and South Dakota Highway 38. The county comprises five incorporated communities -- Bridgewater, Canistota, Montrose, Salem, and Spencer -- across 576 square miles and sixteen townships, with a 2020 Census population of 5,682 (estimated at roughly 5,776-5,800 more recently, a modest but real increase). The South Dakota Department of Transportation has carried out a multi-year I-90 reconstruction project running through the county, and McCook County is listed as a member county of the Sioux Metro Growth Alliance, a regional economic-development partnership built around Sioux Falls-area growth.

That combination -- interstate access, proximity to a fast-growing metro, and organized regional economic-development involvement -- puts McCook County in a different position than most rural South Dakota counties, which sit further from major growth corridors and remain purely agricultural in character. It doesn't mean McCook County has become suburban: it remains predominantly farm and ranch country away from the interstate and the incorporated towns. But a buyer evaluating land here, especially anything near I-90, an interchange, or one of the county's incorporated communities, should factor in the real possibility of stronger long-term development pressure and land-value dynamics than a comparably sized county farther from the Sioux Falls corridor, and should check current zoning district and any recently approved subdivisions directly with the county.