SinkholeOdds

Sinkhole risk in Sublette County, WY: Pockets of it

Pockets of it

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

On soluble rock
20%
At or near the surface
20%
Buried under cover
0%

What this means before you buy

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 992 of Sublette County's 4,886 square miles on soluble rock, 992 of them with the rock at or near the surface. With about 8,965 residents (2 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 296 map points about 4.1 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 Sublette County

The nearest county rated sinkhole country is Emery County, UT, about 263 miles south. 3 of the 6 closest counties land in the same band; the ground changes quickly around here.

The rock underneath

The largest mapped soluble unit here is the Wasatch Formation (SW) (fine-grained mixed clastic), Eocene in age, covering about 15% of the county. Next is the Ankareh Formation, Thaynes Limestone, Woodside Shale, and Dinwoody Formation at 1%.

2% 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 Wyoming

Sublette County ranks 5 of 23 in Wyoming for soluble rock at the surface, and sits above 74% of US counties on that measure.