Buying Land in Johnson County, Wyoming

A Zoning Code That Was Finished, and Then Never Adopted

Johnson County's history with zoning is unusual for Wyoming: rather than simply never writing a code, the county actually finished one. The Johnson County Planning Department and Planning & Zoning Commission presented complete zoning regulations to the Board of County Commissioners on March 18, 2014. The Board took no action to adopt them and set no timeline for revisiting the question -- so, more than a decade later, Johnson County still has no district-based zoning ordinance in effect.

In its place, the county runs on its 2005 Comprehensive Land Use Plan, which authorizes the Planning Department's review of development, subdivision, lot division, and exemption-use requests without the district map, permitted-use lists, or minimum-lot-size table a formal zoning code would provide. As of this writing, Johnson County is actively working on a new Comprehensive Land Use Plan update -- the Land Use Plan Steering Committee held public open houses in August 2026 to review draft maps and technical data. That means the review process described here is genuinely in flux; a buyer should confirm the current status directly with the Planning Department rather than relying on this page alone if that update has since been adopted.

No Building Permit at All -- But Subdivision and Septic Review Still Apply

On unincorporated land in Johnson County, there is no building permit requirement and no building inspection for most residential construction. A statewide electrical wiring permit is still required regardless of county building-permit policy, and it's worth building to a recognized code voluntarily, since there's no county inspector confirming that a structure meets one.

That light touch on construction doesn't extend to land division or wastewater: the Planning Department still reviews subdivisions, lot divisions, and exemption-use requests under the 2005 plan (and the state's 35-acre subdivision exemption discussed on the Wyoming hub still applies to how a parcel can be legally divided), and it still issues septic permits for on-site wastewater systems. Contact the Planning Department before assuming either a land division or a septic system is a simple, unregulated matter here.

Bordering the Bighorn National Forest: A Real Boundary, a Federal One

Johnson County's western edge runs directly against the Bighorn National Forest, which gives land here genuine access to public land for hunting, grazing allotments, and recreation that many Wyoming counties don't have -- including named elk, deer, and antelope hunt areas and Wyoming Game and Fish Walk-In Areas right around Buffalo (see our dedicated hunting-land page for the specifics). It's worth being precise about jurisdiction, though: anything involving the Forest Service land itself -- access easements across it, special-use permits, firewood or grazing permits -- is a federal matter handled by the Buffalo Ranger District, not a Johnson County function. The county's own Road & Bridge Department maintains over 550 miles of county roads, which is the right first call for whether a specific private parcel's access road is county-maintained, but that maintenance generally stops at the forest boundary.