Buying Land in Dinwiddie County, Virginia

A rural, agricultural county south of Petersburg

Dinwiddie County, established in 1752 out of Prince George County, sits immediately south and west of Petersburg and the Tri-Cities area, within the historic footprint of the Siege of Petersburg during the Civil War. With a 2020 Census population of 27,947 spread across roughly 504 square miles of land, the county carries a genuinely low-density, agricultural and timberland character -- a realistic market for a buyer looking at raw acreage, timber tracts, or a small farm rather than a subdivision lot. The county seat is the small, unincorporated town of Dinwiddie itself.

Because Dinwiddie borders the more urbanized Petersburg, Colonial Heights, and Fort Gregg-Adams (formerly Fort Lee) corridor, parts of the county closer to that boundary see more residential and commercial pressure than its more rural southern and western reaches -- worth factoring in if the specific parcel you're evaluating sits near that edge versus deeper into the county's agricultural interior.

Zoning: a distinctive 400-foot frontage rule in the general agricultural district

Dinwiddie's zoning ordinance (Chapter 22 of the county code) sets out an A-2, Agricultural General district that allows single-family residential development on a minimum three-acre parcel -- but conditions that on 400 feet of road frontage along a public, VDOT-maintained road. That frontage figure is meaningfully longer than what many comparable rural Virginia counties require, and it means a narrow, deep three-acre parcel that would qualify elsewhere might not qualify here without a frontage variance or an easement solving the access question. If you're evaluating a landlocked or narrow-frontage tract in Dinwiddie's agricultural zones, confirm this specific requirement with the Planning and Zoning Office before assuming standard rural-county frontage rules apply.

The county's two agricultural zoning districts also permit agritourism activities -- relevant if your land plan includes a farm stand, seasonal event, or similar use, and a good reason to also review Virginia's statewide Agritourism Activity Liability law (covered on our Virginia state page) alongside the local zoning permission itself.

Septic, well, and what to confirm locally

As everywhere in Virginia, septic and private well permitting for a typical single-family home runs through a Virginia Department of Health local health district office rather than a county department directly. Dinwiddie is served by VDH's Crater Health District, a seven-locality office also covering Emporia, Hopewell, Petersburg, Prince George, Surry, and Sussex; Dinwiddie's own health department sits at 14010 Boydton Plank Road (804-469-3771) and handles soil evaluations for onsite sewage systems and site evaluations for private wells directly.