Buying Land in Reagan County, Texas

Big Lake, Texon, and a county built on a single discovery well

Reagan County's modern identity traces to a single event: the May 1923 completion of the Santa Rita No. 1 well near what became the community of Texon, which converted the county's economy from agriculture to petroleum almost overnight and, more consequentially, opened the entire Permian Basin -- 61 counties across West Texas and southeastern New Mexico -- to oil exploration for the century that followed. That legacy is not just historical trivia here; it shows up in current production data. Reagan County produced more than 6 million barrels of crude oil in August 2024 alone, ranking fifth among all Texas counties that month, and the post-2010 hydraulic fracturing boom (horizontal drilling into the Wolfcamp shale in particular) has kept the county's oil-and-gas activity at a genuinely high level even a century after the original discovery. For a land buyer, that history translates into a present-day reality: active wells, pipeline right-of-way, and existing oil-and-gas leases are common features of rural Reagan County parcels, and mineral ownership is very often split from surface ownership on land that has been in the same family for generations.

Groundwater: split between two districts, plus a state-flagged area

Reagan County's groundwater regulation is genuinely more fragmented than a single-district county. The Santa Rita Underground Water Conservation District, formed in 1989, was originally organized to cover roughly 751,886 acres, but 65,350 of those acres were carved out and annexed into the neighboring Glasscock Groundwater Conservation District back in 1988 -- meaning a specific well's applicable district, and that district's particular permitting rules, spacing requirements, and fee schedule, depends on exactly where in the county the parcel sits rather than simply which county it is in. Confirming which district (if either) actually covers a target parcel is a genuinely necessary first step here, not an assumption to make from the county name alone.

Layered on top of that district split is a separate state designation: TCEQ has identified a portion of northern Reagan County, together with adjoining parts of Upton and Midland Counties, as the Reagan, Upton, and Midland County Priority Groundwater Management Area (PGMA), most recently documented in a TCEQ recommendation report dated February 2017. Texas's PGMA program exists specifically to flag areas the state has identified as experiencing, or at risk of, critical groundwater problems -- often used to encourage formation of a new groundwater conservation district where one doesn't yet adequately cover the area. That a piece of Reagan County carries this designation is worth investigating directly with TCEQ for land in the county's north end, independent of which GCD (if any) also applies there.

Zoning, subdivision, and septic: the statewide default applies

Reagan County has no general zoning ordinance in its unincorporated area, consistent with the Texas statewide default -- the City of Big Lake, the county seat, does maintain its own municipal zoning ordinance with eight zoning districts, but that authority stops at city limits and does not extend into the surrounding county. This research did not find evidence that Reagan County holds TCEQ OSSF (septic) authorized-agent status; the county falls under TCEQ Region 8, based in San Angelo, so absent a confirmed local authorized agent, septic permitting for unincorporated county land most likely routes through that regional office. Confirm current process, fees, and required site-evaluation steps directly before budgeting a system, and check with the county's own subdivision and platting process (administered through the Commissioners Court, as in most unzoned Texas counties) for any parcel being newly platted.