What are foundation conditions like in Blackwell, Oklahoma?

Reviewed by Preston · Updated 2026-11-12

In short: Blackwell is clay country: about 66% of the city is mapped in soils rated high shrink-swell ¹.

What does the soil survey show for Blackwell?

Blackwell covers about 6 square miles ² and had 6,085 people in the 2020 Census ².

Which soils matter most for houses in Blackwell?

• Tabler, about 23% of the area ¹: Very deep, moderately well drained, very slowly permeable soils that formed in calcareous loamy or clayey alluvial sediments ³.
• Milan, about 13% of the area ¹: Deep, well drained, moderately slowly permeable soils formed in loamy Pleistocene alluvium on treads and risers of paleoterraces ⁴.
• Bethany, about 9% of the area ¹: Very deep, well drained soils that formed in loess or alluvium of Pleistocene age over shale of Permian age ⁵.
• Port, about 2% of the area ¹: Very deep, well drained, moderately permeable flood plain soils that formed in calcareous loamy alluvium of Recent age ⁶.
• Reinach, about 1% of the area ¹: Very deep, well drained, moderately permeable soils that formed in material weathered from loamy alluvium mostly from red beds of Permian age ⁷.
• Kirkland, about 33%, is land the survey does not rate as soil ¹.

What does this mean for houses in Blackwell?

Clay that swells and shrinks. Where high shrink-swell soil sits under a house, wet spells lift the slab edges and drought drops them, and uneven watering does more harm than uniform change. See perimeter wetting heave, edge drop in drought and tree-root drying.

Which soils cover Blackwell?

Looking for a foundation company near Blackwell?

Companies that serve Blackwell can appear on the company map in the Homeowner Hub. Paid listings there are marked Sponsored; the library and the AI guide don't rank or recommend any of them.

Buying or selling a house in Blackwell? Realtors who serve the area can be on the same map, also marked Sponsored, and for realtors covers the seller disclosure form, inspections and the sale timeline. Seeing cracks at home? Start with for homeowners.

How were these numbers measured?

We overlaid the city limits from the Census Bureau ² on the USDA soil survey's map units ¹ and added up the area of each soil. Where a map unit is a mix of soils, its area was split by the percentages the survey lists for its major soils, so shares leave out minor inclusions and do not add to 100%. Shrink-swell is rated by the linear extensibility of a soil's most expansive layer, the survey's measure of how much it changes length between wet and dry (6% or more is high). Water table, bedrock and flooding come from the survey's map-unit summaries: the shallowest water table in any month, the shallowest bedrock, and the most common flooding frequency. Bedrock here includes soft, weathered sandstone and shale that a pier can push through, so it is not the depth where piers stop. These are mapped averages, not a test of any one lot; fill, grading and the soil actually under a house can differ, which is why a site visit or soil boring still decides a repair.

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