Abstract To accurately model the regional climatic effects of land use/cover change processes, precise reconstructions of historical land cover are essential. Over the past 300 years, the northeastern region has undergone more significant land cover change than any other region in China owing to large numbers of farmer migrants from North China, reflecting the tremendous effects human activities can have on such changes. In this paper, based on official statistical data, documentary records, survey data, and modern remote-sensing data and vegetation and soil maps, land cover changes across Northeast China over the past 300 years have been reconstructed through cropland data calibrations using correlation analysis, potential vegetation reconstructions, urban area estimations, spatial analyses of land cover type changes by K-mean clustering analysis, and consideration of land use driving forces. The results indicate that cropland expanded gradually from south to north through the cities of Shenyang, Jilin, and Ha’erbin as well as out to the margins of the central plain of Northeast China, with a maximum expansion occurring in the 1950s. Pristine forests and grasslands diminished significantly, especially in the early twentieth century, due to this expansion of cropland. The conclusions drawn from these results are, first, that these results provide a scientific understanding of the process by which the original land cover was replaced by cropland in Northeast China over the past 300 years. Second, the results enabled the development of a series of land use/cover changes maps with 50–100 year time resolutions and county-level spatial resolutions. Based on the reconstructed results of these land cover type changes, the dynamics and causes of land cover changes are discussed in their social–historical contexts.