Buying Land in Big Horn County, Wyoming

No general zoning -- but real permit requirements underneath it

Big Horn County has confirmed directly that it has no countywide zoning: the only exceptions are localized airport protection zoning near the county's airports and floodplain regulations in mapped flood-hazard areas. That puts Big Horn among the roughly six Wyoming counties the state hub describes as having adopted no general zoning at all. For a buyer coming from a zoned state, the practical upside is real -- there's no district system to check, no permitted-use table to satisfy, and no zoning certificate to obtain before building or changing a property's use.

That said, "no zoning" is not the same as "no permits." The county's own Land Planning Department states plainly that, aside from the flood and airport zone exceptions, it still requires permits for construction and development, for subdivisions, and for small wastewater (septic) systems. A buyer planning to build should confirm the current construction-permit process with the Land Planning Department before assuming the absence of zoning means no county sign-off is needed at all.

Subdividing land: open to any private parcel, with a size-based process split

Big Horn's Subdivision Regulations, modeled on Wyoming Statutes Title 18, Chapter 5, Article 3 and last amended in January 2022, allow subdivision on any privately-owned land in the county. A simple subdivision application covers a division of five lots or fewer; a major subdivision application is required for anything larger, and several categories of division are exempt from the regulations entirely. This runs independently of the zoning question above -- a parcel with no zoning restrictions on its use can still require full subdivision review before it can be legally divided and sold in pieces, and the state's 35-acre exemption (see the Wyoming hub) still applies on top of these county-level categories where relevant. Application fees are non-refundable, and a final plat submission carries its own separate recording fee -- confirm current figures with the Land Planning Department before budgeting for a specific split.

Big Horn Basin farmland runs on century-old irrigation, not just rainfall

Big Horn County sits inside the Big Horn Basin, where irrigation -- not dryland farming -- has driven agriculture since the early 20th century. The federal Shoshone (Reclamation) Project brought irrigation water to the basin beginning in the 1900s, and sugar beets became a defining crop alongside alfalfa, grass hay, beans, corn, and malt barley. A parcel's productive value here often depends on its access to one of four named irrigation districts delivering that water, which is a separate question from whether it independently holds a State Engineer's Office water right.

See our dedicated farm land page for the four irrigation districts themselves (Shoshone, Deaver, Willwood, and Heart Mountain), their current per-acre assessment costs, contact information, and how to verify a specific parcel's active water-right status before buying.