The Biggest Little County in Texas : Rattlesnakes Outnumber People in This Parched Precinct

This is America’s least populated and richest county per capita.

As far as the eye can see, it is a flat, treeless, hot sageland, alive with rattlesnakes, coyotes and cats, broiling under a blazing sun and blistering wind this time of year.

Only 91 men, women and children lived in Loving County in West Texas at the time of the last, 1980 Census. The population is the same today.

“There isn’t another county in the country like this one,” said Mary Belle Jones, 57, the chief appraiser and historian whose husband is county sheriff.

“You can’t buy a loaf of bread or a pint of milk anywhere in Loving County,” she said. “There are no stores, no school, no doctor, no dentist, no ambulance, no firetruck, no lawyer, no bank, no cemetery, no saloons, no stoplights, no mail delivery or a jail in this county.”

The county has a cafe, a gas station and a post office--all in Mentone, population 15, the county seat. Up the road three miles in Creagerville, where 22 people live in six trailers and one house. The rest of the county’s inhabitants are scattered on ranches all over the countryside.

Mattie Thorp, 82, a widow, has run the county’s only gas station for the last 25 years.

An ‘I Love Reagan’ Cap

She also is chairman of the Democratic Party’s Precinct 1 in Loving County. But her gas station is plastered with pictures of Ronald Reagan and George Bush and she often wears an “I Love Reagan” cap.

When asked, “How can you be a Democratic official and have these photographs of Bush and Reagan in your gas station?” she replied: “They elected me to the job, I didn’t ask for it. I vote for the man, not for the party. I voted for Reagan both times and for every Republican candidate for President as far back as I can remember, and I’m going to vote for George Bush in November. . . .”

This is a Democratic precinct chairman? Yes. And this is Loving County, where, “We all know one another,” historian Jones said in her office in the brick, two-story 1935 Loving County Courthouse. “Many of us are related. When anybody sneezes around here everybody knows it. This place is so quiet you can hear rattlesnakes crossing the road. . . .”

Many county officials are related. For example: Fay Busby, 70, the county treasurer, is the mother-in-law of Juanita Busby, 46, the county clerk. Donald Creager, 53, the county judge, is the brother of Royce Creager, 54, one of the four county commissioners.

Millionaires Help Out

The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that Loving County’s per capita income of $34,173 for all residents older than 15 was the highest in the nation where the average per county income is $10,797. “Three or four millionaire ranchers live in the county. That bumps up our average income considerably,” Judge Creager explained.

As judge for the past 15 years, he not only takes care of judicial matters but presides over the Board of County Commissioners, as well. He is the county’s chief administrative officer. He proudly noted that no one in Loving County is on welfare. Ranching and oil fields are the county’s two major revenue producers.

Elgin Jones, 60, sheriff for the last 22 years, never wears a uniform. He drives an unmarked car. Asked about crime in Loving County, the 5-foot-10 lawman wearing a big sweat-stained cowboy hat replied: “Well, it isn’t as bad as it is in other places. Few people ever find their way here. We’re at the end of the road. No main highway goes through the county. But we get our share of criminals now and then.

“I remember 1980. Now, that was a bad year let me tell you. We had five burglaries by two men and a woman who came over here from San Antonio. That’s crime. Imagine five burglaries in one year in Loving County. By the way, we got all them burglars. They’re still serving time.”

Rattlesnakes in the Freezer

What do people in Loving County do for excitement? Barbara Creager, 54, makes hatbands and belts out of rattlesnake skins. Her deep freeze is full of frozen rattlesnakes.

“I hate rattlesnakes,” she said as her son, Devan, 31, brought a rattler to her house. The snake continued to twitch after having its head cut off. “They are so deadly,” Creager said. “A young man almost died the other day after he chopped the head off one. He was careless. That head without the body bit him on the hand. Luckily his life was saved by surgery.”

The Creagers have 14 cats. “Rattlesnakes feed on mice. We keep the cats to eat the mice and keep the rattlers away,” she said. “We keep so many cats because coyotes eat the cats. So, we have to keep replenishing our cat supply.”

She said the biggest pastime in Loving County is dominoes. “We get together at one another’s house and play dominoes for hours in the evenings.”

Barbara Creager is president of the only club in the county, the 11-member chapter of the Texas Extension Homemakers. “We meet twice a month and try to bring information and all sorts of timely subjects to people in the county, like AIDS. Recently we did a program on AIDS. No one has AIDS in the county so far as we know but we thought people here ought to be made aware of that terrible disease.”

Loving County had an elementary school until 1978 when the local school district merged with the district in Wink, 33 miles east of Mentone in Winkler County. The Mentone school had four pupils and two teachers when it closed. Now, 16 kindergarten through 12th-graders are bused daily from Loving County to Wink.

In 1887, Loving County was named after Oliver Loving of the Charles Goodnight-Oliver Loving Trail. Loving was shot in 1867 by Comanches on the cow trail he made famous. He crawled five miles after the shooting chewing on an old kid glove for food. His wounds were treated but he died of gangrene. The county keeps alive his memory on a large plaque on the courthouse grounds.