Wyoming

Buying Land in Goshen County, Wyoming

Goshen County is genuinely unzoned, with no building inspections and no zoning ordinance to check -- one of the most permissive land-use pictures in Wyoming. What it does have is some of the state's most productive irrigated farmland, running on a century-old federal canal system that's worth understanding on its own terms.

Countywide Zoning

Generally favorable

Confirmed via a Wyoming County Commissioners Association survey: Goshen County has no county zoning regulations.

Building Inspections

Generally favorable

Goshen County also has no building permit or inspection requirement for unincorporated land -- one of the more permissive combinations in the state.

Subdivision Review

Case-by-case / verify locally

The absence of zoning does not remove subdivision review -- Wyoming's statewide subdivision law (see the state hub) and the county's own Subdivision Regulations still apply to dividing land here.

Irrigation District Access

Could not confirm

Much of Goshen County's farmland value depends on physical access to the North Platte Project's century-old canal system, not just holding a State Engineer's Office water right -- confirm both separately for irrigated farmland.

No zoning, no building inspections -- a genuinely open regulatory picture

Goshen County has no county zoning regulations, confirmed through a Wyoming County Commissioners Association survey of county practices, and it also has no building permit or inspection requirement for unincorporated land. This is a real, verified fact about the county rather than an assumption -- Goshen is one of the roughly six Wyoming counties the state hub identifies as having adopted no general zoning at all, and unlike Campbell County (which pairs an absence of blanket zoning with an active building department) or Big Horn County (which still requires a construction permit), Goshen genuinely has neither a zoning code nor a building-permit process to navigate for most residential construction on county land.

That doesn't mean there's nothing to check. Wyoming's statewide subdivision law still applies here as it does everywhere in the state (see the Wyoming hub for the 35-acre exemption threshold and how the exemption categories work), and Goshen County's Planning & GIS department administers the county's own Subdivision Regulations for dividing land in unincorporated areas. Septic permitting is also still required and administered locally: the county has its own conventional septic system application process, so a compliant on-site wastewater system is a real requirement even where zoning and building permits are not.

Some of Wyoming's most productive farmland, running on a century-old federal canal system

Goshen County has more than 103,000 acres of irrigated land on the plains along Wyoming's eastern border, and it has ranked at the top of the state for value of agricultural production, with wheat, dry beans, barley, corn, potatoes, hay, sunflowers, and sugar beets among its major crops. That productivity is largely a function of the North Platte Project, a federal Bureau of Reclamation irrigation system dating to the early 1900s: construction began on Pathfinder Dam and the Interstate Canal in 1905, and the Fort Laramie Canal -- managed today by the Goshen and Gering-Fort Laramie Irrigation Districts -- was completed by 1925, ultimately supplying roughly 107,000 acres across the Wyoming-Nebraska border area.

For a buyer evaluating irrigated farmland in Goshen County, the practical point is that a parcel's productive value typically depends on its actual physical connection to this canal system and its standing within the relevant irrigation district, which is a distinct question from whether it independently holds a water right on file with the State Engineer's Office. Confirm both separately -- the underlying water right's priority date and status with the State Engineer's Office (see the Wyoming state hub), and the parcel's actual assessment and delivery status within its irrigation district -- rather than assuming "irrigated cropland" is a self-explanatory label here.

Who to Call Before Buying Land in Goshen County

Well-water permitting and irrigation-water-right priority questions are state, not county, functions -- see the Wyoming State Engineer's Office on the state hub. A separate question -- a parcel's physical delivery access within the Goshen or Gering-Fort Laramie Irrigation Districts -- should be confirmed with that irrigation district directly, not the county.

Planning & Zoning