SinkholeOdds

Sinkhole risk in Crane County, TX: Pockets of it

Pockets of it

Soluble rock at the surface or under thin cover in part of the county.

On soluble rock
16%
At or near the surface
16%
Buried under cover
0%

What to do about a house in Crane County

Check the parcel against your state survey sinkhole map, and ask for an inspection if cracks, depressions or sticking doors show up.

That works out to roughly 124 of Crane County's 785 square miles on soluble rock, 124 of them with the rock at or near the surface. With about 4,594 residents (6 per square mile), much of the land is open, and the mapped rock may sit far from where people actually live. The figures come from 292 map points about 1.6 miles apart, so a pocket smaller than that can be missed or overstated.

Read next: why gypsum and salt move faster than limestone, and the signs to look for and how an inspection works.

Counties around Crane County

The nearest county rated sinkhole country is Ector County, TX, about 30 miles north, close enough that the same rock may run under the county line. 4 of the 6 closest counties land in the same band, so this is a regional pattern rather than a local quirk.

Which formation it is

The largest mapped soluble unit here is the caliche deposits (evaporite), Pleistocene and Holocene in age, covering about 9% of the county. Next is the Fredericksburg Group at 2%.

10% of the county sits on gypsum or salt, which dissolves in years rather than millennia. That share matters more than its size suggests.

The county also lies over the Permian Basin, Anadarko Basin,Dalhart Basin, Palo Duro Basin, a deep salt or gypsum basin. Deep beds rarely cause surface collapse on their own, but wells and mining into them have.

Against the rest of Texas

Crane County ranks 107 of 254 in Texas for soluble rock at the surface, and sits above 72% of US counties on that measure.