What are foundation conditions like in Midwest City, Oklahoma?

Reviewed by Preston · Updated 2026-11-11

In short: Midwest City sits mostly on sandy soils over Permian sandstone and loamy old terraces, so only about 10% rates high shrink-swell and 46% low ¹. About 22% of the city is mapped as urban land ¹, one of the larger shares of the cities compared, so the soil under an older house is less certain from the map.

How much of Midwest City has expansive soil?

Midwest City covers about 24 square miles ², in the Oklahoma County soil survey ¹.

Which Midwest City soils matter most for houses?

• Harrah is very deep to sandstone and well drained, in sandy and loamy colluvium on low hills ³. Stephenville is moderately deep with soft sandstone 20 to 40 inches down ⁴.
• Teller is very deep and loamy, formed in old stream-terrace sediments, with roughly 18 to 30 percent clay in the upper subsoil ⁵.
• Littleaxe is deep and well drained, formed from weakly cemented sandstone interbedded with weakly cemented shale, on upland ridge crests in the Cross Timbers ⁶.
• Darnell is shallow and sandy, with sandstone 10 to 20 inches down ⁷.

What causes foundation problems on Midwest City's soils?

Sandy and loamy soils swell less than clay, so movement more often comes from fill settlement, erosion, plumbing leaks and tree roots. Where urban land hides the original soil, a soil boring or a look at the soils mapped on nearby open ground fills the gap.

Which soils cover Midwest City?

ZIP codes in Midwest City

ZIP 73110, ZIP 73130

Looking for a foundation company near Midwest City?

Companies that serve Midwest 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 Midwest 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's current 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 the shares above leave out minor inclusions and do not add to 100%. A soil counts as high, moderate or low shrink-swell by the linear extensibility of its most expansive layer, the survey's measure of how much a soil changes length between wet and dry (6% or more is rated 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 for the whole city, 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.

Related

• OKC metro soils
• Garber sandstone
• Shrink-swell and the active zone
• Compare Oklahoma cities