Tahoka, the Lynn County seat at US 87 and US 380 south of Lubbock, sits on ground the Handbook of Texas calls almost level and dotted with playas, with Tahoka Lake a few miles northeast of town.
Tell us what your yard is doing and we’ll come take a look — no charge.
Tahoka, the Lynn County seat at US 87 and US 380 south of Lubbock, sits on ground the Handbook of Texas calls almost level and dotted with playas, with Tahoka Lake a few miles northeast of town.
Lynn County is unusual even by South Plains standards for how much of it is basin. The Handbook of Texas lists two year-round lakes, Double Lakes northwest of Tahoka and Tahoka Lake to the northeast, plus Mound Lake, Twin Lakes and Guthrie Lake as large permanent playas elsewhere in the county, all set in 915 square miles of almost level terrain broken only by an occasional draw. Tahoka Lake itself is described as natural and spring-fed, with a bed that sometimes goes dry, a normal level of 2,982 feet, and steep banks of sandy clay loam.
The point for a homeowner is that the whole landscape here is built to collect water rather than carry it away. Rainfall, about 17.9 inches a year on the county average, runs toward the nearest basin and sits. A house lot on the gentle approach to one of those basins is on the receiving end of that flow.
Tahoka was platted in 1903 as the seat of a brand-new county, the first town on the lower South Plains south of Lubbock, and it incorporated in 1915. It grew on cattle and then cotton to 3,262 people in 1980, and the 2020 census counted 2,375. Cotton ginning has been the town's business for most of a century.
A county seat that reached its high-water mark in 1980 is unlikely to be adding many new subdivisions, so the lot you own has probably been lived on, paved, re-fenced and re-landscaped through several decades of owners, and on ground with almost no natural fall it takes very little of that, a driveway an inch too high, a bed built up against the house, to trap water where it never used to stand.
The Handbook describes Lynn County's soils as sandy loam, black and gray, supporting both cotton and ranching. The Amarillo fine sandy loam NRCS maps extensively across the Southern High Plains is a good example: a friable sandy loam surface over a sandy clay loam subsoil, nearly level, with runoff rated negligible on slopes under one percent. That surface takes water readily, which fools people. The clay below takes it slowly, and the caliche below that takes it barely at all.
So the pattern in a Tahoka yard is a lawn that looks fine for an hour after the storm and then goes soft and stays soft, with a low corner that finally shows standing water a day later as the perched water works its way sideways. That is a subsurface problem, and a French drain is the tool for it, provided it has somewhere to send the water.
On a lot with a street or alley low enough to reach, we build fall with grading and run the drain there. On a lot with no low side, which is common here, the honest solution is a sump pump that lifts the water to a point where it can be discharged legitimately. What we do not do is dig a soak-away pit, because the ground beneath Tahoka has already demonstrated that it will not soak.
For the slab, the same rules that apply across the plains apply here: downspouts extended and piped, a positive slope off the foundation, and no beds or paving that hold water against the wall. Our guide to why yards flood on the South Plains explains the caliche and playa mechanics in more depth.
Whatever the yard is doing, we bring the full range to Tahoka — and it all starts with understanding why yards here flood:
If your yard in Tahoka floods and will not drain, or water is pushing toward the house, call (806) 298-6289. We will come out, measure the grades, check what is under the lawn, and tell you which fix fits the lot. No charge and no obligation for the visit.
Free on-site drainage assessments in Tahoka and across the South Plains. We’ll tell you what’s actually causing the water — caliche, a flat lot, a nearby playa — and what it takes to fix it.