Foundation repair contractors in Rockwall County

Rockwall County has no soil survey manuscript of its own. It was surveyed jointly with its larger neighbour and published as the Soil Survey of Kaufman and Rockwall Counties in 1977, which means the acreage and percentage figures in that book describe the two-county area, not Rockwall alone (Soil Survey of Kaufman and Rockwall Counties). Anyone quoting a precise Rockwall-only soil statistic should be asked where it came from.

What the joint survey does establish is the geological setting. The area "is divided into two major physiographic areas, the Texas Blacklands and the Texas Claypan area," and the Taylor Group formations — Ozan, Wolfe City, Pecan Gap Chalk and Marlbrook Marl — "crop out in the western portion of the survey area," which is the Rockwall side. Those "calcareous clay and shale strata weather readily to form dark clayey soils such as Heiden and Houston Black soils," while "Axtell, Crockett, and Wilson soils formed in sandstone" (same survey).

The Houston Black-Heiden association — 19 percent of the survey area, 77 percent Houston Black soils — is described as the one where "urban development is replacing agricultural land use near some towns and along Lake Ray Hubbard" (same survey). Regionally these are the Houston Black-Heiden-Wilson clays of high shrink-swell potential (NRCS Texas General Soil Map).

Small county, late growth

Rockwall is the smallest county in Texas at 147 square miles, its soils have "loamy to clayey surfaces and cracking, clayey subsoils," and rolling uplands east of the East Fork valley cover 80 percent of it. Lake Ray Hubbard, built in 1969–70, now covers 13.55 percent of the county. Population fell to 5,872 by 1960, was 7,046 in 1970, and reached 25,604 by 1990 (Texas State Historical Association). Nearly all of the housing stock therefore postdates the lake.

City-level permit practice and watering restrictions are on the Rockwall and Rowlett pages.