What are foundation conditions like in Elk City, Oklahoma?

Reviewed by Preston · Updated 2026-11-12

In short: Only about 0% of Elk City is mapped in high shrink-swell soil; 80% rates low ¹. The soil survey also maps bedrock within 40 inches under about 53% ¹. Which of these a house sits on decides whether clay swell, water, rock or soft ground is the thing to watch.

What does the soil survey show for Elk City?

Elk City covers about 16 square miles ² and had 11,561 people in the 2020 Census ².

Which soils matter most for houses in Elk City?

• Grandfield, about 25% of the area ¹: Very deep, well drained, moderately permeable soils that formed in loamy and sandy alluvium, and eolian sediments of Pleistocene age ³.
• Dill, about 20% of the area ¹: Moderately deep, well drained, moderately rapidly permeable soils that formed in residuum weathered from weakly cemented sandstone bedrock of the Elk City Formation of Permian age ⁴.
• Pixlee, about 13% of the area ¹: Very shallow to shallow, well drained, moderately rapid to moderately permeable soils that formed in residuum weathered from weakly cemented sandstone of the Elk City Formation of Permian age ⁵.
• Cordell, about 9% of the area ¹: Shallow, somewhat excessively drained, moderately over very slowly permeable soils that formed in residuum weathered from hard, calcareous siltstone of the Doxey Formation of Permian age ⁶.
• Nobscot, about 5% of the area ¹: Very deep, well drained, moderately rapidly permeable soils that formed in wind-modified loamy and sandy sediments of Pleistocene age ⁷.
• Water, about 4%, is open water ¹.

What does this mean for houses in Elk City?

Shallow rock. Where bedrock is close to the surface, lots are often cut into rock on one side and built up with fill on the other, so fill settlement and slope creep matter more than clay swell, and piers can stop at very different depths across one house. See depth to rock from borings.

Which soils cover Elk City?

Looking for a foundation company near Elk City?

Companies that serve Elk City 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 Elk City? 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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