How hard is the water in Park County, WY?

1.4 grains per gallon

You do not need a softener here.

The median hardness measured in Park County, WY is 24 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 1.4 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 115 samples at 75 sites between 1990 and 2023, drawn from groundwater wells, which is what most taps and private wells in the county draw on.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 0.7 and 10.3 gpg. That spread crosses a decision line, so some homes here land on a different answer. A $10 test strip on your own tap settles it. Confidence in the county figure: high (how it is measured).

What to do next

You can skip the softener. At 1.4 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Park County says otherwise, ask to see their reading in grains per gallon and compare it with this one. Because Park County straddles a decision line, check your own tap with a $10 test strip before you spend anything.

More on when a softener is not worth it.

From 0.2 to 79.4 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Park County was 3 mg/L and the hardest 1,360 mg/L, a 453-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 10.3 gpg and the bottom quarter below 0.7 gpg. So even in a soft county, a handful of wells here produce water hard enough to scale a heater.

Wells 1.4 gpg, rivers and lakes 2.3 gpg

115 groundwater samples from 75 wells put the median at 23.6 mg/L. 453 surface samples from 20 sites put it at 39.4 mg/L. In Park County the rivers and lakes come out 0.9 gpg harder. Here the surface water reads harder than the wells, which often points to streams fed by limestone springs or irrigation return flow. The two sources are close, so the county figure should hold whichever one your tap is on.

Park County against the rest of Wyoming

Among the 23 Wyoming counties with data, Park County is the softest. Across the whole country it is harder than 11% of counties.

Hardest: Natrona County at 124.4 gpg. Closest to Park County: Sublette County (3.1), Washakie County (7.9), Teton County (8.5).