Loving County's Census Estimate Is 52. Fuel Stops Still List Mentone.

The U.S. Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 county population file puts Loving County at 52 people on July 1, 2025. Sorted against every other county row in that file, 52 is the lowest estimate in the country. The next county in the same file is Kalawao County, Hawaii, at 82. The file's April 1, 2020 estimates base for Loving County is 62. These are estimates in one vintage. They are not a headcount taken on the courthouse steps, and a later vintage can revise them.

That number is why a gas-station story is even a story. It is not a reason to invent how many stations the county has.

Oilfield Outpost's website describes a Texan-owned gas station and convenience store at 1325 Ranch to Market 652, Mentone, Texas 79754. The site says the store is open 24 hours and that it serves crews and travelers in the oil field. Sinclair's station locator lists a separate truck stop at 9418 Texas 302, Mentone, Texas 79754. That page lists unleaded, plus, premium, No. 2 diesel, and DEF, and it lists 24-hour fueling and a 24-hour convenience store. The same page says location hours and services may vary. This article has not counted the pumps in person. It can say that two companies publish two Mentone fuel addresses. It cannot say that either one is the county's only station. A headline that calls one of them the only station does not survive those two pages.

Named for a trail driver, organized twice

The Handbook of Texas county entry says Loving County was named for Oliver Loving, an early Texas cattleman. The handbook's biography of Loving is the tighter account of the man. He was born in Hopkins County, Kentucky, on December 4, 1812. In 1866 he and Charles Goodnight drove a herd toward Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on a route later called the Goodnight-Loving Trail. The biography says Loving was wounded on a later drive after he rode ahead in daylight, and that he died of gangrene at Fort Sumner on September 25, 1867. He was reburied in Weatherford on March 4, 1868. The biography says Loving County, Texas, and Loving, New Mexico, are named for him.

The county entry says the legislature separated Loving County from Tom Green County in 1887 and left it attached to Reeves County for judicial purposes. It also says Loving County is the only Texas county organized twice. In 1893 a canal company filed a petition, the Reeves County commissioners approved organization, and a town called Mentone, twelve miles north of the present town, was named the county seat. The handbook describes that first organization as a fraud: the 1890 census had counted three people, the petition claimed 150 voters, and the organizers kept control after settlers left. The Pecos flood in August 1893 wrecked the irrigation work. On May 12, 1897, the legislature deorganized the county and attached it to Reeves again.

The second organization came with oil. The handbook says the Wheat No. 1 well, completed on September 1, 1925, opened commercial production and the Wheat oilfield. By 1930 the census counted 195 people. In 1931 the county was organized again. A town called Ramsey was renamed Mentone and became the county seat. The handbook says Mentone is the only town in the county. The handbook's last population sentence in that entry is an estimate of 86 people as of 2014. The Vintage 2025 census file is newer, and it is the figure used above.

The same entry says that by the end of the 1980s the county had no economic farming or manufacturing, and that the economy rested on oil and gas. It gives 1986 production of more than 1.7 million barrels of crude and large volumes of gas. Those are 1986 figures. This article does not carry them forward. No current Railroad Commission total was pulled for this piece, so none is stated.

What is on the county's own site

The county website, reviewed for this article on September 26, 2026, is not a business directory. It is a notice board. The homepage posted a notice of a public hearing on the proposed 2026 property tax rate, set for September 14, 2026, at 2:00 p.m., at the Loving County Courthouse, 100 Bell Street, Mentone, Texas 79754. The notice said the proposed rate exceeds the no-new-revenue rate and does not exceed the voter-approval rate. A linked notice said the proposed increase is from 0.47486 per $100 of value to 0.64639 per $100. The same page noticed a September 14, 2026 hearing on the proposed 2027 budget, at the same hour and the same courthouse.

This article does not report how the court voted. The pages cited here are the notices, not the minutes. What they show is the scale of the government that 52 estimated residents are attached to: one courthouse address, a tax-rate hearing, and a budget hearing, posted by the county itself.

The handbook adds an older civic fact that explains the quiet. It says the county closed its school in 1972 because two students were enrolled. It does not, in the paragraphs used here, name the district those students attend now. That current district is left unnamed rather than guessed.

What changed, and what this piece will not pretend

The change that can be dated from a primary file is the population estimate. In the Vintage 2025 file, the April 1, 2020 base is 62 and the July 1, 2025 estimate is 52. The change that can be dated from company websites is narrower. A station on Ranch to Market 652 describes itself as a 24-hour oilfield stop. A Sinclair locator page lists a second Mentone truck stop and warns that hours may vary. The change that can be dated from the courthouse site is a proposed 2026 tax rate, higher than the no-new-revenue rate, on a hearing notice that was still posted in late September 2026.

The Handbook of Texas explains why the surface stayed thin: scarce drinking water, absentee landowners, ranching as the use of an arid surface, and oil income from underground. That is the handbook's explanation of the late twentieth century, not a 2026 land-ownership study. The fuel pages are the 2026 evidence this piece actually has. They are real businesses with published addresses. They are not a complete census of Loving County commerce, and this article does not pretend they are.