How hard is the water in Morton County, ND?
1.9 grains per gallon
You do not need a softener here.
The median hardness measured in Morton County, ND is 33 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 1.9 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 24 samples at 11 sites between 1990 and 2023, drawn from groundwater wells, which is what most taps and private wells in the county draw on.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 1.1 and 10.5 gpg. That spread crosses a decision line, so some homes here land on a different answer. A $10 test strip on your own tap settles it. Confidence in the county figure: medium (how it is measured).
What to do next
You can skip the softener. At 1.9 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Morton County says otherwise, ask to see their reading in grains per gallon and compare it with this one. Because Morton County straddles a decision line, check your own tap with a $10 test strip before you spend anything.
More on when a softener is not worth it.
From 0.6 to 36.6 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Morton County was 10.3 mg/L and the hardest 625.9 mg/L, a 61-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 10.5 gpg and the bottom quarter below 1.1 gpg. So even in a soft county, a handful of wells here produce water hard enough to scale a heater.
Wells 1.9 gpg, rivers and lakes 17.6 gpg
24 groundwater samples from 11 wells put the median at 32.6 mg/L. 518 surface samples from 15 sites put it at 302 mg/L. In Morton County the rivers and lakes come out 15.7 gpg harder. Here the surface water reads harder than the wells, which often points to streams fed by limestone springs or irrigation return flow. A utility here that draws from the aquifer can deliver noticeably different water from a private well next door.
Morton County against the rest of North Dakota
Among the 53 North Dakota counties with data, Morton County is number 52 of 53 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 15% of counties.
Softest in North Dakota: Hettinger County at 1.1 gpg. Hardest: Walsh County at 54 gpg. Closest to Morton County: Hettinger County (1.1), McHenry County (2.8), Adams County (3.4).