Last reviewed September 10, 2026 · County data updated as new figures are released.

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Looking for land for sale in Franklin County, Missouri? Justin Head and Ryan Record are Whitetail Properties land specialists and lifelong Franklin County locals who help landowners buy and sell hunting tracts, farms, and recreational ground from the Missouri River bottoms to the Meramec and Bourbeuse valleys — and Justin is also a licensed Missouri attorney with 20 years in real estate law, handling the title, access, and estate questions that come with rural land.

Franklin County is one of the most accessible and diverse pieces of countryside in Missouri — close enough to St. Louis to commute in, far enough out to feel like the country, and stitched together with the kind of rolling hardwood ridges, creek bottoms, and family farms that drew the first European settlers to this stretch of the Missouri River valley two centuries ago. Whether you’re looking for a managed hunting tract along the Bourbeuse, a working farm near Union or Washington, or a weekend retreat near Sullivan and the edge of the Ozarks, Franklin County land has something most other Missouri counties don’t: real proximity to a major metro and a real, working land economy.

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2026 Franklin County Land Snapshot

• 2026 median: $9,320 per acre across 16 qualifying closings (through August 31, 2026)
• Three-year median: $7,507 per acre across 73 closings (Aug 2023–Aug 2026)
• Median time to contract: 63 days (full dataset)

Full closed-sale data, price zones and methodology: The Bare Dirt Report: Franklin County. All five counties side by side: Bare Dirt Reports. Checking utilities or development potential? Start with our guide to rural electric service in Missouri.

Land for sale in Franklin County

We list hunting, farm, timber, and recreational land throughout Franklin County. Our active inventory changes throughout the year. See our current listings, or use the county Bare Dirt Report for closed-sale prices. Browse what we currently have, or find out what your own ground is worth.

What Franklin County Land Is Known For

• Easy access to St. Louis — most of the county is 30 to 60 minutes from the metro, drawing buyers who want acreage without giving up city access
• The Bourbeuse and Meramec Rivers — some of the best smallmouth bass water in the state runs through this county
• Wine country — the Missouri Rhineland and the Hermann AVA touch the northern part of the county; vineyards and tasting rooms support a strong tourism economy
• A real working farm community — cattle, hay, row crop, and an active 4-H and FFA culture rooted in towns like Union, Washington, Pacific, St. Clair, Sullivan, and New Haven
• Hunting — whitetail and turkey populations are strong, with managed habitat throughout the river bottoms and timber ridges

Towns of Franklin County

Franklin County isn’t one place — it’s a string of distinct river towns, each with its own feel, and where you buy land here often comes down to which of them you want to be near.

Washington is the county’s anchor, a city of about 14,500 set on a bluff above the Missouri River. Its brick downtown is one of the best-preserved in the state — more than 400 buildings on the National Register — and it’s been the “Corncob Pipe Capital of the World” since the Missouri Meerschaum factory started turning out pipes on the riverfront in 1869. With a hospital, full shopping, the Rotary Riverfront Trail, and the Hermann wine country just upriver, Washington is the hub buyers lean on; land 15–20 minutes out puts you in the country while keeping town close.

Union, the county seat since 1827, sits on the Bourbeuse River about 50 miles southwest of St. Louis. It’s the government and services center — courthouse, schools, everyday amenities — wrapped in the kind of working-farm country (cattle, hay, and row crop) that defines the middle of the county. The Bourbeuse running through it is also some of the best smallmouth water in the region.

Pacific is the county’s eastern doorstep and the shortest commute to the metro — roughly 35 minutes to St. Louis. Tucked among the silica bluffs along old Route 66 and the lower Meramec, with Shaw Nature Reserve next door, it’s the natural fit for buyers who want real acreage without giving up an easy drive to the city.

Beyond these three, Sullivan, St. Clair, and New Haven round out the county, each opening onto a different stretch of timber, river bottom, and farm ground.

Property Types Common in Franklin County

• Hunting tracts — managed for whitetail and turkey, often along creek bottoms or in mature hardwood timber
• Working farms — cattle pasture, hay ground, and row crop, often family-owned for multiple generations
• Recreational acreage — weekend retreats with cabin sites, ATV/UTV access, and water features
• Timber tracts — hardwood ridges with marketable standing timber
• Rural homesites — smaller acreage parcels for buyers wanting a country home with privacy
• Country homes and farmsteads — houses with shops, barns, and outbuildings on acreage, within commuting distance of the St. Louis metro

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Farm Ground Benchmarks: Franklin County

Sources: USDA NASS county cash rent estimates (Aug. 2024); USDA FSA CRP contract data (Sept. 30, 2025); 2022 Census of Agriculture; MU Extension 2024 Cash Rental Rate Survey. Reviewed July 2026.

What is farm ground actually worth to rent in Franklin County? Per USDA’s county estimates, pasture rents average $26.00 per acre and non-irrigated cropland $72.50 per acre — that cropland figure is the highest of the five counties we serve, reflecting the Missouri and Bourbeuse river bottoms and proximity to St. Louis, while pasture runs well under the $37.50 statewide average.

The county farms deeper than most people expect this close to the metro: 1,657 farms on 265,858 acres (2022 Census of Agriculture), carrying 45,866 cattle and putting up hay on 44,492 acres — the most hay ground and the most cattle of any county we cover.

CRP barely touches this county: just 887.69 acres under contract as of September 30, 2025, earning an average of $97.12 per enrolled acre — and that’s the average payment on existing contracts, not the offer rate for new enrollment. This is working grass and timber country, not set-aside country. For a tract whose income story is grass plus deer, MU Extension’s 2024 survey puts hunting leases at an average of $21.45 per acre statewide — on pasture renting at $26, a hunting lease can nearly double the ground’s annual income. We track what land is actually selling for each quarter in the free Quarterly Ozarks Land Report.

Farms for Sale in Franklin County

Franklin County is a genuine row-crop county, and the only one of the five where crop ground outweighs grass. USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture counts 1,657 farms — more than twice any other county we serve — on 265,858 acres, of which 131,988 acres, very nearly half, is cropland. Grains and oilseeds sold $45.9 million, hogs and pigs $13.4 million, and cattle $19.5 million, with 45,866 head in the county.

Average farm size here is 160 acres, the smallest of the five, because proximity to St. Louis has divided the county into many more, smaller holdings. That changes who buys and how a farm should be priced: a Franklin County tract is competing for a farmer, a developer, and a weekend buyer at the same time.

• Tillable acres — soil types and productivity, drainage, field layout, and how the ground actually yields
• Crop leases — current tenant terms, rent, and exactly how the lease transfers at closing
• Pasture and hay — grass acres, condition, and cattle facilities where the operation runs livestock
• Improvements — grain storage, machine sheds, barns, and hog or livestock facilities
• Water and drainage — ponds, wells, creeks, and how the ground sheds water in a wet spring
• Split and development potential — frontage on corridors like Highway 100, Highway 47, or Highway V, utilities at the road, and whether the tract is worth more whole to a farmer or divided into smaller tracts for buyers wanting acreage within reach of St. Louis

Selling a farm in Franklin County

Franklin County farms often have a real split-value question: the tract may be worth more to a farmer whole, or more divided to buyers who want acreage within reach of St. Louis. That is a legal and title question as much as a marketing one, and it is worth answering before the sign goes up rather than after an offer arrives. Country homes on acreage sit in the same conversation: a house with shop space and ground behind it draws the local buyer and the buyer coming out from St. Louis, and the house and the ground are worth pricing separately. On the river farms the same question runs a different direction, where the mapped flood zone often separates the productive bottom and the recreational frontage from the buildable upland, and all three are worth pricing apart.

Floodplain, Bottom Ground, and River Frontage in Franklin County

The Missouri River runs the northern edge of the county and the Bourbeuse and Meramec run through the middle and the east. That water does three things to a farm at once. It is why the bottom ground grows what it grows. It is why part of that ground sits in a mapped flood zone. And it is why the recreational buyer wants the place at all.

All three are true of the same acre, and a farm gets priced badly when only one of them is counted.

The flood zone is often the best recreational ground on the place. The low ground is where the river is actually reachable. Gravel bars, low-bank access you can back a truck to, a place to camp, a place to put in a canoe, the swimming hole the family will drive out for. An upland tract can look at the river. A bottom tract can use it. In this market usable river access carries a premium that comparable ground without it does not, and on some tracts the acreage a builder would call worthless is the acreage the buyer is really paying for. Price it as a liability and you hand that value to the buyer.

Which makes the legal side worth knowing before you list. If river access is part of what you are selling, expect questions about who owns the creek bed, whether the public can float through, and whether anyone can stand on the gravel bar. Those answers are not obvious and they affect what the access is actually worth. We wrote the long version in Missouri Water Law: who owns the creek, who can float it, and what that means for your land.

Know where the line is before you price. Flood zones are published by FEMA and searchable by address at the FEMA Flood Map Service Center. It is free and it takes a few minutes. A tract in a Special Flood Hazard Area is not unsellable and it is not worth less across the board. It is worth knowing before you price it rather than after an appraiser tells your buyer.

Building down there requires a permit here. Franklin County regulates floodplain development. Development in the floodplain may require review by the Franklin County Floodplain Administrator and an outside contracted engineer, applications go in on the SEMA floodplain development permit form, and putting up a structure also calls for a FEMA Elevation Certificate prepared by an engineer. Planning and Zoning notes those take longer than a standard submission. If a buyer is picturing a cabin on the low ground, that is a timeline and a cost, and it lands better coming from you than from their engineer.

Financing follows the map. Under the National Flood Insurance Program’s mandatory purchase requirement, a buyer with a federally backed loan on a structure inside a Special Flood Hazard Area has to carry flood insurance. On a farm with an existing house or outbuildings in the zone that is a real line in the monthly payment, and it belongs in the conversation early rather than during underwriting.

So price the pieces separately. Tillable bottom sells on productivity, drainage, and lease terms. River frontage sells on access and what you can do when you get there. Dry upland with road frontage and a building site sells to someone else again. Marketed as one blended per-acre number, a Franklin County river farm almost always leaves money with whichever piece is strongest.

When we take a farm here with bottom ground, we pull the flood maps before we price it, and we market the tillable, the river access, and the buildable upland as the three separate assets they are.

Public Hunting & Conservation Land Nearby

Buyers drawn to Franklin County for hunting have strong public-land options close by. The county holds several of the largest conservation areas on the northern edge of the Ozarks — including Meramec Conservation Area (~3,879 acres), Little Indian Creek (~4,205 acres), and Long Ridge (~1,866 acres), with deer, turkey, and Meramec and Bourbeuse River access. See our guide to public hunting in the Missouri Ozarks for acreage, allowed game, and official maps across all five counties.

Deer & Turkey Harvest

In the 2025–26 season, hunters reported 6,751 deer taken in Franklin County across all methods, and 956 turkeys in the 2025 regular spring season — the highest spring turkey total of any county in Missouri. See our Deer & Turkey Harvest by County page for five-year trends across all five counties we serve.

Floating & Rivers Nearby

Franklin County sits on two of our home-water floats: the slow, shaded Bourbeuse River and the easygoing lower Meramec around Sullivan and St. Clair, with Old Cove Canoe & Kayak and the Meramec State Park concession close by. See our guide to our favorite floats in the Missouri Ozarks for access points and outfitters across all five counties.

Where to Stay Nearby

Want to try the area before you buy? Franklin County puts you 45–75 minutes from St. Louis, with cabins at Meramec State Park and historic B&Bs and whole-home rentals around Washington’s wine country. See our guide to where to stay in the Missouri Ozarks for direct-booking cabins, inns, and rentals across all five counties.

Selling Land in Franklin County, Missouri

Thinking about selling your Franklin County land? You’re in one of the strongest rural markets we cover. Franklin County sits on the western edge of the St. Louis metro, so hunting tracts, timber, row-crop and pasture ground, and recreational acreage all draw a deep buyer pool — weekend hunters out of the city, farmers expanding their base, and families wanting a place on the Bourbeuse or Meramec. Whether your ground is timbered ridge near Sullivan, bottomland outside Union, or a smaller homesite tract near Washington or Pacific, there’s demand for it when it’s priced and marketed right.

We price Franklin County land on what comparable parcels are actually closing for — not a fantasy number the market won’t support — using real local sales, including the closed price-per-acre data we track every quarter in the Ozarks Land Report. As landowners and hunters here ourselves, we handle the whole sale: valuation, drone and mapping work, qualifying buyers, and closing. If you want a straight answer about what your property is worth, request a free, no-obligation land valuation or call Justin or Ryan directly.

Before you price anything, see the closed-sale numbers: The Bare Dirt Report: What Franklin County Land Is Actually Worth reports the median price per acre by year, price zones, tract-size tiers, and time to contract from three years of qualifying MLS closings in this county.

Thinking of selling? Start with our guide to selling land in Franklin County — valuation to closing, step by step.

Talk to a Local Land Agent

Justin Head · (573) 308-7376 · justin.head@whitetailproperties.com

Ryan Record · (573) 259-6360 · ryan.record@whitetailproperties.com

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Things to Do in Franklin County

Even if you are not buying or selling land yet, Franklin County has a lot worth coming for. A few of our guides:

• Float Trips
• Where to Stay

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What our clients say

“Best agent I have ever worked with!”

Todd F.

“Justin went above and beyond. Very knowledgeable about recreational land in eastern Missouri. Excellent service, and an excellent result.”

John N.

“Justin was absolutely amazing. Knowledgeable, kind, responsive, and professional. We are all lucky to have him in our community!”

Andrew D.

Get the Quarterly Ozarks Land Report

Free every quarter — real price-per-acre trends and what’s selling across the Missouri Ozarks, built from actual closed sales. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Other Counties We Serve

Ozarks Land Report covers five Missouri counties. Whether your property sits across the line in another county we serve, or you are searching for land in a different part of the Ozarks, here is where else we work:

• Land for sale in Gasconade County, Missouri
• Land for sale in Crawford County, Missouri
• Land for sale in Phelps County, Missouri
• Land for sale in Dent County, Missouri

Frequently Asked Questions

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Franklin County Land Research — The Tools We Use

Smart land buying starts with homework. Before you ever walk a tract in Franklin County, a handful of public resources let you check boundaries, ownership, acreage, taxes, and recorded surveys — the same tools we lean on for every property we list and sell. Here’s where to look and how to actually use each one.

Missouri Land Survey Index — find & buy recorded surveys

Maintained by the Missouri Department of Agriculture, the Missouri Land Survey Index lets you search for and purchase land surveys recorded across the state. If a prior survey exists for a Franklin County tract, this is where you find it — invaluable for confirming corners, easements, and whether the acreage on paper matches what’s actually on the ground before you trust a fence line. (This one is statewide, so it works for every county we cover.)

Franklin County GIS / Parcel Viewer — maps, boundaries & ownership

The Franklin County GIS parcel viewer is an interactive map where you can search by owner name, parcel number, or address and see the parcel drawn on aerial imagery — its shape, approximate acreage, road frontage, and the neighboring tracts. It’s the fastest way to get oriented on a property before a site visit. Keep in mind that GIS lines are an approximation, not a survey — great for scoping a property, not for setting a boundary.

Franklin County Assessor — parcel & ownership search

The Franklin County Assessor’s parcel search is where the county record on any tract lives: ownership, parcel number, acreage, and assessed value. Worth a look on a property before you ever make an offer.

For more on vetting a rural tract the right way, see our guide to checking legal access before you buy and what Missouri’s purple paint law means for posted boundaries.

These are third-party and government resources; the information can lag or contain errors, and none of it replaces a current survey or a title search. When you’re ready to buy or sell Franklin County land — or just want help reading any of it — call Justin Head at (573) 308-7376 or Ryan Record at (573) 259-6360.