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For such a remote place, Loving County has a rich history.
“Loving County consists of 671 square miles of flat desert terrain with a few low-rolling hills stretching over calichified bedrock and wash deposits of pebbles, gravel, and sand. The soils of the county-loams, chalk, clays, and sands-support desert shrubs, cacti, range grasses, and salt cedars along the river. Wildlife includes waterfowl, quail, deer, badgers, javelinas, rabbits, bobcats, coyotes, armadillos, skunks, opossums, raccoons, rattlesnakes, killifish, brine shrimp, and turtles.”
“The county has an immature drainage system made up of hundreds of playas and dry draws that feed into the Pecos only after heavy rainfall. In 1936 Red Bluff Dam was built across the Pecos on the Texas-New Mexico boundary for irrigation and recreation. Water from the Pecos, however, is too saline for drinking, so the 100 residents of the county haul water from a community tank.”
“In 1887 Loving County was separated from Tom Green County, but it remained attached to Reeves County for judicial purposes. It was named for Oliver Loving, an early Texas cattleman who was mortally wounded by Indians on the Pecos in the area of the county as he rode in advance of his herd in 1866. Loving County is the only Texas county to be organized twice.”
“Early in 1893 six men from Denver, Colorado, organized the Loving Canal and Irrigation Company of Mentone, Texas, with the stated purpose of migrating to isolated Loving County and constructing an irrigation canal from the Pecos to surrounding farmland. Although the 1890 United States census reported a population of only three in Loving County, on June 13, 1893, the organizers of the canal company filed a petition with the Reeves County Commissioners Court signed by 150 allegedly qualified voters who requested separate organization for Loving County. The court approved the petition and allowed the organization of the county.”
“Mentone, a town laid out by the company organizers twelve miles north of the present Mentone, was designated the county seat. Irrigation company organizers and several nonresidents were elected to county offices.”
“Subsequently, several families came to live in or near Mentone, probably intending to buy irrigated farmland. A general store and several adobe houses were built there. The Loving County Commissioners Court voted to issue bonds valued at $6,000 to build a courthouse in Mentone. Although construction began, the building was never finished. In August 1893 the Pecos flooded and destroyed the work that had been done on the irrigation project. With no hope for crop harvests, the few settlers left the area.”
“On September 6, 1893, the county commissioners reportedly appointed County Judge J. J. Combs as agent of the county to locate and acquire patents for county public school lands.”
“Loving County reportedly held a second election of county officials on November 8, 1894, and the organizers and nonresidents were reelected to office. There is evidence that neither of the Loving County elections was legitimate. By 1897 the county officials fled the area. Taxes were not collected for 1893 and 1894 and had not been assessed or collected for 1895 and 1896. County government was chaotic, and the state legislature deorganized Loving County on May 12, 1897, reattaching it to Reeves County.”
“After Mentone was abandoned in 1897, no town existed in Loving County.”
“By 1910 the population grew to 248 whites and one black, after a legitimate land and irrigation promotion established a settlement, called Juanita, in the southwestern corner of the county. The settlement, which was renamed Porterville in 1910, had a post office, several businesses, and the first school and church in the county.”
“Early in 1921 J. J. Wheat and Bladen Ramsey organized the Toyah-Bell Oil Company and leased acreage for drilling on the Russell Ranch.”
“Oil activity in the county increased the population to 195–76 women and 119 men, all white-by 1930. The larger population produced the town of Ramsey and led to the second organization of Loving County in 1931. Ramsey was renamed Mentone and became the county seat. By 1933 several oil camps were built in the county, and the population reached a record of 600.”
Julia Cauble Smith, “LOVING COUNTY,” Handbook of Texas Online
Oil remains the primary source of economic growth in Loving County. The county is known is also known as having the smallest county population in the entire United States. The county seat, Mentone, is unincorporated, yet is the only community left within the entire county. It has very limited city services. The school closed in 1972 when enrollment fell to two students. Now, children attend school in the Wink ISD some thirty miles away.
I came to Mentone on August 13, 2013
In 1935, the first completed courthouse in Loving County was erected at a cost of 25,000. The architect was Evan J. Wood of Pecos.
Mentone appears as a blur on the horizon.
A “guest to Mentone” sign-in sheet underneath a photo remembering Oliver Loving.
Directly across the street from the courthouse is the only post office in Loving County.
The courthouse annex named after the county’s beloved sheriff, Billy Hopper, was recently constructed in 2011 and dedicated in 2012.
The only gas station you will find in Loving County…
…and the only church. This church once stood in the town of Porterville before it was abandoned. It was moved to Mentone shortly after citizens left the town.
A highly shaded playground to beat the nearly-unbearable Loving County summer heat
Mentone skyline