Buying Land in Wichita County, Texas

No general zoning, but Sheppard Air Force Base changes the calculus nearby

Wichita County has no general zoning authority over its unincorporated area, consistent with the statewide Texas default. But Sheppard Air Force Base -- roughly 5,736 acres just north of Wichita Falls (CORRECTED 2026-09, superseding an earlier understated ~5,338-acre figure), and the largest, most diverse pilot-training installation in Air Education and Training Command -- creates real land-use pressure that a buyer near it should understand. The City of Wichita Falls has adopted its own airport/military zoning ordinance establishing Accident Potential Zone I and Accident Potential Zone II around the base and the shared Wichita Falls Regional Airport, restricting the density and type of development allowed in those zones for safety and noise reasons; a 2014 Sheppard AFB Joint Land Use Study went further, laying out compatible-use recommendations for the base, the city, and the county to consider jointly. Neither of those documents amounts to county zoning, though: they bind city-limits and ETJ land through Wichita Falls' own ordinance, not unincorporated county land automatically.

What the county itself can do near Sheppard is narrower. Local Government Code Chapter 231, Subchapter D, authorizes a commissioners court to create a "restricted military zone" extending up to one mile from a military installation's boundary line -- but the subchapter limits that authority to regulating motor vehicle speed and parking and the taking of photographs in the zone, and it explicitly bars the county from requiring removal of existing property or restricting a landowner's right to use the land for agricultural purposes (aside from certain commercial operations like feedlots). In practice, that means a parcel just outside Wichita Falls' city limits near Sheppard AFB can face real practical constraints -- aircraft noise, accident-potential exposure, and possible future base-expansion interest -- without necessarily falling under a formal land-use zoning regime. Check the city's airport zoning map and the JLUS recommendations directly for a specific parcel's proximity to the base.

Water: city reservoirs, private wells, and no district watching the aquifer

Wichita Falls' municipal water supply is entirely surface water, drawn from Lakes Arrowhead and Kickapoo and stored in a secondary in-city reservoir -- groundwater plays no role in the city's own system. That distinction matters because Wichita County itself has no groundwater conservation district. The Rolling Plains Groundwater Conservation District, which manages the Seymour Aquifer in this part of Texas, covers Baylor, Haskell, and Knox Counties under its own TWDB-filed management plan -- Wichita County is not included, and the county's own portion of the Seymour Aquifer (referred to in district planning documents as "Pod 4") has been formally designated non-relevant for that district's joint regional water-availability planning. For a rural buyer planning to drill a private well into the Seymour Aquifer or local creek alluvium, that means no local district sets spacing rules, requires permits, or caps production -- only the statewide rule of capture applies. Confirm well-yield expectations directly, since a lack of district oversight also means less centrally available data on local aquifer conditions.

Septic and floodplain permitting: two separate processes

Inside Wichita Falls, on-site sewage facility (septic) permitting runs through the Wichita Falls-Wichita County Public Health District, which the city's own code designates as the enforcement representative for OSSF rules, subject to TCEQ certification of its individual reviewers; septic maintenance providers operating in the city must also register with the health district's Environmental Health Division. Outside the city, Wichita County sits in TCEQ Region 3, based in Abilene, for state environmental functions -- confirm directly whether a specific unincorporated-county parcel is covered by the city-county health district's program or routes through the regional TCEQ office. Separately, Wichita County administers its own Floodplain Development Permit process for construction, land-clearing, or road and bridge work in a mapped floodplain, distinct from the City of Wichita Falls' own floodplain permitting inside city limits -- check with the county's floodplain administrator (housed with its Emergency Management function) before planning any development on or near a mapped floodplain.