Ten Acre Loving
County Ranch
pictured above was offered on Ebay May, 28, 2006 for $4980
Five Acre River
Front Property in Loving County Sold at auction May 2, 2006 for
$6,100.00
Richest Little County In America
In a photo journal report,
Time.com reported in July 2011 that Loving county was the richest
little county in the U.S. Measured per capita, the residents of Loving
County, Texas are amongst the nation's wealthiest.
The average per capita income of a Loving
County resident is $89,471.
The Only Game In Town
According to
TxLottery.org,
the seventy Loving County residents spent $ 56,509.00 on Texas Lottery
tickets in 2004.
Imagine there are no lawyers. It's easy if you try. No litigation to
bother us. Above us only sky.
Loving County is famous for what it doesn't have. There are no active
schools, no movie theaters and no grocery stores -- it's a 50-mile round
trip to buy a loaf of bread.
And not one of its residents holds a law degree.
"Well, goodness," says Billy Hopper, Loving County's chief deputy
sheriff, "if you've got to have rattlesnakes or lawyers, which one would
you have?"
Nevertheless, the Loving County Courthouse seems to run fine without
them. . . .
Read the full article
(registration required)
Objectivism Online
March 05, 2006
Demonstrating yet again the intellectual bankruptcy of the "revolt now,
think later (if at all)" basic premise of Libertarianism, a faction of
Libertarians recently attempted to borrow a page from the Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh's playbook and take over a small rural town, this time in West
Texas.
Like Antelope, Oregon, which had a similar population before the
Rajneeshes took it over by immigrating en masse into a nearby ranch in
the early 1980's, Loving County, and its only town (and county seat),
Mentone, are barely populated.
Objectivism Online
Record Keeping is easy at the
Loving County Courthouse Beverly Hanson, who serves as Loving
County's district and county clerk. only needs four metal, double-row
filing cabinets to store all the county's district court files dating
back more than 30 years.
John Council
Texas Lawyer
October 8, 2004
"When I was little, I couldn't wait to leave," said Beverly Hanson,
Loving County Clerk. Then, she said, "I went to see the bright lights"
— she became an apartment manager in Dallas — married and divorced and
happily returned home. "I knew I was safe here," she said.
Free County Project?
The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported July 13 that a
five-acre island in the Upper Tampa Bay was recently put up for sale on
Ebay. The current owner is Larry Pendarvis, who (according to the Times) wants to sell the land and use the money to "help finance a
Libertarian-led government in remote Loving
County, Texas -- population 67."
Ringmasters of the
Free Town
Project
show up in Loving County, and according to
Sheriff Billy Burt Hopper, they're lookin' for trouble.
The Free Towners attempted to buy some land in the county with an eye
toward moving in enough sympathetic citizens to allow them to "win most
of the elected offices in the county administration" and "restore
[Loving County] to freedom."
. . .
Read
There is a Loving County Courthouse and a Loving County/Mentone post
office. There may or may not be a café. It's hard to tell if it's open.
Our visit occurred on a Sunday morning, which traditionally is a slow
day for Mentone. We were following a roadrunner down the main street
(observing all traffic laws), hoping he/she would pause so we could
photograph him/ her. There was a snake in his/her mouth, but this is not
unusual. Especially in Mentone. The roadrunner was avoiding us and was
still trying to keep his/her grip on the snake when it (the roadrunner)
collided with a rabbit. Evidently the rabbit was so shocked at seeing
humans that he/she froze and the preoccupied roadrunner almost impaled
him/her with his/her beak. The rabbit quickly came to his/her senses and
resumed normal rabbit activity in Sunday morning Mentone. . .
TexasScapes
Article
1
Cafe, 1 Gas Station, 2 Roads: America's Emptiest County
By
RALPH BLUMENTHAL, New York Times
Published: February 25, 2006
MENTONE, Tex. — How empty is Loving County...
So empty that when Sheriff Billy Burt Hopper ran for office in 2004, he
and his opponent attended each other's campaign barbecues. So empty that it
cannot sustain two political parties: Republicans and Democrats all call
themselves Democrats and vote in a single primary. . .
Sheriff Billy Burt Hopper patrols Loving County, in West Texas, in a pickup
truck with two shotguns and an AK-47.
Land for sale in or near Loving
County Texas
Libertarian
Faction attempts takeover of Loving County
The newly
elected sheriff had barely pinned on his star in January 2005, he
recalled, when his phone rang with an old-fashioned warning: "You
don't know it, but you're in trouble." A group was planning a
takeover of the county, said the caller, a woman in Arizona who
promised to send him some information by e-mail. . .
Read the full Article from the New York Times
(Registration Required)
In November of 2005 Texas
Rangers notified Libertarian Larry Pendarvis that he and other
Libertarians were wanted for 'knowingly making a false statement on a voter
registration application'. The charges could be upgraded to conspiracy.
Pendarvis responded with charges of his own. . .
Pendarvis responds
Barren West Texas County's population keeps dwindling
Loving Co., Mentone, Texas
By Chris Roberts Associated Press, Mar 18 2001
MENTONE--Smoke 'em if you got 'em at the Boot Track Cafe in Loving County.
And leave the plastic in your wallet when the bill comes, because credit
cards aren't accepted.
"The rules that apply a lot of places don't apply here," said Don Creager, a
Loving County judge for 28 years." We just live a different lifestyle. We
like it the way it is."
Empty is the way it is: Over the past decade, no county in the Lower 48
states has had fewer people than this slice of West Texas tucked underneath
New Mexico.
Loving County' population dropped from 141 in 1992 to 113 two years ago and
was just 67 last year, according to census figures released this week.
There is no grocery store here, or bank, or hospital. not even a cemetery.
No doctors or lawyers. The nearest sizable city is Pecos, 20 miles to the
south, with about 9,500 people. and even they go to Odessa for big shopping
trips.
Loving County is so vacant that each inhabitant could claim 10 square miles
as his or her own. City dwellers in Manhattan get 400 square feet.
There are not a lot of rules and regulations, meaning smokers can light up
anywhere in Loving County's only sitdown eating establishment.
"You go up to Austin and you can't smoke anywhere," Bott Track owner Charles
Derrick says as he takes a drag on a filterless cigarette. "You step outside
the hotel (to smoke) and they ask you what you're doing there."
The wide-open spaces are knotted together by a few roads that lead to enjoy
a community bond that insulates them against crime and juvenile delinquency.
The county's population plummeted 37.4 percent between 1990 and 2000--more
than any other Texas county. No families are moving in and residents expect
little change.
County Commissioner Royce Creager said oil and gas yield 98 % of tax
revenue, about $1 million in 2000. the median income in 1997, the latest
figure available, was about $32,000. Most adults work in the oil patch.
The county's 10 school-age children travel to Wink, 26 miles from Mentone,
to learn their lessons.
The county has been around since the late 1800's. It was named for Oliver
Loving, a cattleman who was mortally wounded by Indians as he rode ahead of
his herd in 1866.
The county's population peak might have been in 1933, when 600 people lived
here, most of them hoping to cash in on an oil boom that started in the mid-
1920's.
