Wesley’s Week: Loving The Nation’s Smallest County – Literally

by Wesley

In Monday’s edition of USA Today, the paper’s lead story on the front page covered how the Great Plains were handling shifting population patterns, including a general trend to leave rural communities for urban ones. A map included with the story illustrated how the population changed in each county from 1950 to 2006 based on estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

What caught my eye was the county that had the steepest drop in population percentage-wise during that time – Loving County, Texas, which holds the record for having the fewest residents of any county in the continental United States. It lost more than 70 percent of its population and now stands at a grand total of 60 residents.

You read right – just 60 residents in one county composed of 677 square miles. That is less than one person on average every 10 square miles. Wow.

I cannot even imagine living in a county that barren of people. I mean, I have driven through rural parts of the Triangle that seemed dead to me, yet when I realize the number of homes I have driven past in those areas, there probably are more people within any random stretch of one mile in Wake, Durham or Orange County than all you can find in Loving County. That just boggles my mind.

And it is not like the county totally lacks resources either. It is within a 45-minute drive of an interstate (not all parts of North Carolina can claim that), has the Pecos River running on its western border, and has the major Texas staples as its primary sources of employment – oil and gas drilling, and ranching. Yet nobody except a few holdouts seems to want to live there, and you would have to go all the way back to before 1910 to find its population lower than it is now. Wonder why?

Whatever the reason, at least I now have a great appreciation for the rural sections of the Triangle. From now on, when someone says a person around here lives in the boondocks, I will tell them “Hey, if you really want to know where the boondocks are, check out Loving County, Texas!”

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