Water wells in Donley County, Texas.
The median water well in Donley County, Texas is 170 feet deep, based on 841 driller's reports filed with the Texas Water Development Board since 2001. Half the wells on record are between 90 and 275 feet, and the deepest is 1,338 feet. These are borehole depths, not depth to water.
All Texas counties · Source: Texas Water Development Board, Submitted Drillers Reports (TDLR/TWDB well report index). Read 2026-09-07.
What the filed reports say.
Every water well drilled in Donley County since 2001 is meant to be filed with the state by the driller. These are those reports, counted.
Median
170 ft
The middle of 841 water wells with a reported borehole depth. Half were drilled shallower, half deeper.
Typical range
90–275 ft
The spread is wide. Eighty per cent of the wells on record finish between 90 and 275 ft, a range of 185 ft, which means the county average is a weak guide to any single property. The wells nearest a parcel are worth more than the county's middle.
Deepest on record
1,338 ft
One well. A single deep hole says what the county can demand, not what it usually does.
Reports on file
841
Water-supply wells — domestic, irrigation, stock, public supply — carrying a borehole depth. The county has 1,189 filed reports in total; the rest are monitoring wells, soil borings, test holes and injection wells, which are not water wells and are not counted here.
Water quality
None reported
No driller reported injurious water quality on the 830 reports that answered the question. That is an absence of reports, not a clean bill of health; the field is the driller's own judgement at the time of drilling.
How the record moved.
The middle of the record has barely moved: 168 ft in 2001–2009, 178 ft in 2020 onward. Drillers in Donley County are finishing at about the depth they were finishing at twenty years ago.
- 2001–2009
- 226 wells, median 168 ft.
- 2010–2019
- 387 wells, median 168 ft.
- 2020 onward
- 228 wells, median 178 ft.
What this page cannot tell you.
The state's report index carries some things and not others, and the difference decides what any honest page built on it may say.
Not the depth to water.
Every depth here is how far the hole went, which is deeper — often much deeper — than the level water stands at. The report index does not carry a water level at all; those readings live in the state's groundwater database and its nightly archive, and reach a report from there.
Not a yield.
Where a driller tested a well and wrote down what it made, that is on record elsewhere. It is not in this index, so no number on this page is a gallons-per-minute figure and none should be read as one.
Not a prediction for your parcel.
A county median is a description of 841 holes spread across the whole county. The wells that matter for one property are the nearest ones in the most similar ground, which is a different question and the one the check below answers.
Not every well.
Wells drilled before the reporting era, wells never filed, and wells filed with the wrong location are all missing or misplaced. The index is what was submitted, not a census of what exists.
Questions about Donley County wells.
- How deep are water wells in Donley County, Texas?
- The median water well in Donley County, Texas is 170 feet deep, based on 841 driller's reports filed with the Texas Water Development Board since 2001. Half the wells on record are between 90 and 275 feet, and the deepest is 1,338 feet. These are borehole depths, not depth to water.
- How much does it cost to drill a well in Donley County?
- Nobody can quote a Texas well from public records, because the record holds depth and not price. What the record does fix is the part of the price that depends on depth: at a median of 170 ft, with eighty per cent of wells between 90 and 275 ft, a quote built on a much shallower hole than the neighbours drilled is a quote to ask about. Drillers price per foot, plus casing, plus the pump.
- Is there a well on a property in Donley County?
- The filed reports show wells near an address, not on it — a Texas driller's report often carries the nearest road rather than a surveyed point, so a well can be filed under a neighbour's address or not filed at all. The record raises the question and the seller answers it. A free water check on Texas Water Report draws the parcel and lists the wells around it with their distances, which is the version of this question a record can answer.
- Are wells in Donley County deeper than the rest of Texas?
- Shallower. The county's median is 170 ft against a middle-county median of about 275 ft across the 176 Texas counties with enough reports to compare. A shallower county usually means a cheaper well, though shallow water is also the water most exposed to a dry year.
- Are wells in Donley County getting deeper?
- Not measurably. The median was 168 ft in 2001–2009 and 178 ft in 2020 onward. The filed record does not show the county drilling deeper over time.
Counties next door.
The ground does not stop at a county line, and neither does the record worth reading.
- Collingsworth County — 899 wells, median 143 ft
- Gray County — 688 wells, median 435 ft
- Carson County — 521 wells, median 582 ft
- Wheeler County — 731 wells, median 160 ft
- Randall County — 6,563 wells, median 326 ft
- Potter County — 1,916 wells, median 292 ft
Texas water due diligence
What the public record holds about groundwater under a property, and the questions to settle before closing.
For drillers
The same records, read for the rig: what the neighbours hit and how far the hole is likely to go.
Every Texas county
Well counts and median depths for all 176 counties with enough reports to compare.
Check an address in Donley County.
The county median is the middle of the whole county. A check draws the parcel, finds the wells actually around it, and gives the depth band those wells support — free, without an account.