SinkholeOdds

Sinkhole risk in Elko County, NV: Pockets of it

Pockets of it

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

On soluble rock
32%
At or near the surface
32%
Buried under cover
0%

What to do about a house in Elko 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 5,547 of Elko County's 17,173 square miles on soluble rock, 5,547 of them with the rock at or near the surface. With about 54,363 residents (3 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 347 map points about 7.0 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 Elko County

The nearest county rated sinkhole country is Emery County, UT, about 286 miles southeast. 2 of the 6 closest counties land in the same band; the ground changes quickly around here.

What Elko County is built on

The largest mapped soluble unit here is the Tuffaceous sedimentary rocks (sandstone), Late Eocene to Late Miocene in age, covering about 15% of the county. Next is the Shale, siltstone, sandstone, chert-pebble conglomerate, and limestone at 3%.

6% of the county sits on gypsum or salt, which dissolves in years rather than millennia. That share matters more than its size suggests.

Against the rest of Nevada

Elko County ranks 1 of 17 in Nevada for soluble rock at the surface, and sits above 81% of US counties on that measure.