SinkholeOdds

Sinkhole risk in White Pine 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
30%
At or near the surface
30%
Buried under cover
0%

The next step for one property

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 2,639 of White Pine County's 8,887 square miles on soluble rock, 2,639 of them with the rock at or near the surface. With about 8,534 residents (1 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 374 map points about 4.9 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 White Pine County

The nearest county rated sinkhole country is Emery County, UT, about 226 miles east. 2 of the 6 closest counties land in the same band; the ground changes quickly around here.

What White Pine County is built on

The largest mapped soluble unit here is the Shale, siltstone, sandstone, chert-pebble conglomerate, and limestone (shale), Devonian to Mississippian in age, covering about 5% of the county. Next is the Dolomite, limestone, and minor amounts of sandstone and quartzite at 5%.

5% 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

White Pine County ranks 2 of 17 in Nevada for soluble rock at the surface, and sits above 79% of US counties on that measure.