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Texas

How deep are the wells, county by county.

Every water well drilled in Texas since 2001 is meant to be filed with the state by the driller. That is 389,573 water-supply reports carrying a depth, and this is what they say — the middle county finishes at 275 ft, and the counties either side of it are nothing like each other.

The ends of the record.

  • Deepest counties

    Collin County leads at 900 ft

    • Collin — 900 ft median, 653 wells
    • Carson — 582 ft median, 521 wells
    • Webb — 580 ft median, 662 wells
    • Williamson — 560 ft median, 3,232 wells
    • Bell — 535 ft median, 1,274 wells

  • Shallowest counties

    Knox County at 57 ft

    • Knox — 57 ft median, 671 wells
    • Callahan — 60 ft median, 707 wells
    • Haskell — 70 ft median, 1,199 wells
    • Taylor — 71 ft median, 573 wells
    • Jones — 73 ft median, 760 wells

  • Most drilled

    Parker County, 14,171 wells

    • Parker — 14,171 wells, 240 ft median
    • Gaines — 12,298 wells, 200 ft median
    • Montgomery — 11,820 wells, 225 ft median
    • Brazoria — 9,894 wells, 345 ft median
    • Harris — 9,574 wells, 275 ft median

  • The spread

    843 ft between the ends

    Which is why a Texas-wide average is not worth quoting. Depth follows the aquifer under the ground, and Texas has several that behave nothing alike.

All 176 counties.

Sorted by the number of reports on file. Each page carries the county's median, its spread, how the record moved over twenty years, and what it cannot tell you.

Counties the record covers thinly.

Fewer than 500 filed water-supply reports with a depth. The counts are real; a median drawn from them would not be worth printing, so these get a line rather than a page.

Upton (488) · Schleicher (482) · Hutchinson (473) · Ochiltree (463) · San Augustine (462) · Hill (451) · El Paso (448) · Swisher (443) · Dickens (438) · Hardeman (436) · Dimmit (427) · Fannin (421) · Crockett (415) · Hall (402) · Kinney (401) · La Salle (396) · Jim Hogg (391) · Jeff Davis (381) · Dallas (380) · Zavala (379) · Wilbarger (379) · Reeves (369) · Pecos (359) · Childress (359) · Ellis (358) · Sabine (353) · Armstrong (346) · Wichita (342) · Ward (333) · Motley (330) · Trinity (328) · Hemphill (322) · Roberts (318) · Hopkins (317) · Kleberg (317) · Oldham (315) · Brooks (310) · Briscoe (299) · Lipscomb (293) · Kaufman (288) · Sterling (286) · Falls (271) · Stonewall (267) · Crane (230) · Winkler (228) · Coleman (224) · Presidio (220) · Marion (210) · Kent (207) · Titus (194) · McLennan (192) · Camp (189) · Morris (188) · Borden (185) · Cottle (179) · Baylor (169) · Red River (168) · Stephens (166) · Foard (144) · Navarro (135) · Rains (131) · Maverick (129) · Hudspeth (124) · Kenedy (122) · Culberson (113) · Archer (110) · Terrell (100) · McMullen (92) · Franklin (83) · Loving (72) · Zapata (68) · Rockwall (58) · King (52) · Willacy (46) · Lamar (39) · Throckmorton (39) · Shackelford (14) · Delta (11)

How these numbers were counted.

Stated in full, because a number without its method is a number nobody can check.

  • Source

    Texas Water Development Board — Submitted Drillers Reports (TDLR/TWDB well report index)

    Read 2026-09-07. Texas public record; TWDB open data. The board publishes the index; the aggregation is ours, and it is repeated from scratch rather than edited.

  • Counted

    Wells drilled for domestic, irrigation, stock, public supply

    With a reported borehole depth above zero. The layer's largest single category is monitoring wells, which nobody draws water from; counting those would inflate every number on every page.

  • Depth

    Borehole depth, as filed

    borehole depth as the driller reported it, not depth to water. Medians and percentiles are exact — taken from the ordered record itself, not estimated from an average.

  • Bar

    500 reports for a page, 30 for an era median

    Below those, the number is reported as a count with no median rather than as a figure a handful of wells could swing.

Common questions.

How deep is the average water well in Texas?
Across the 176 Texas counties with at least 500 filed reports, the middle county's median water well is 275 feet deep. County medians range from 57 feet in Knox County to 900 feet in Collin County, so a statewide average is close to meaningless — the county, and then the neighbourhood, is what decides depth.
Where do these numbers come from?
The Texas Water Development Board's index of Submitted Driller's Reports. Every water well drilled in Texas since 2001 is meant to be filed by the driller, and the board serves the index publicly. These pages count the 389,573 reports filed for a use somebody draws water from — domestic, irrigation, stock, public supply — that carry a borehole depth, out of 680,660 reports of all kinds. Read 2026-09-07.
Is borehole depth the same as depth to water?
No, and the difference is the most common misreading of this record. Borehole depth is how far the hole went. Depth to water is where the water stands in it, which is shallower and moves with the season and the year. The report index carries the first and not the second, so every depth on these pages is a borehole depth.
Why do some Texas counties have no page here?
78 counties have fewer than 500 filed water-supply reports with a depth on them. A median drawn from a couple of hundred holes spread across a whole county is a number that one deep well can move, so those counties are listed below with their counts instead of being given a page built around a figure that thin.

  • Texas water due diligence

    What the public record holds about groundwater under a property, and the questions to settle before closing.

  • For brokers and agents

    The water question answered before the listing goes up, in language a buyer can act on.

  • For drillers

    The same records read for the rig: what the neighbours hit and how far the hole is likely to go.

Check a property.

A county median is the middle of a whole county. A check draws one parcel, finds the wells actually around it, and gives the depth band those wells support — free, without an account.

Free. No account. Texas only.