Mentone
Mentone, Reeves County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Smallest County Seat in Texas Mentone (6 mi. east) Only town in Loving County -- last organized, most sparsely populated (both in total and per square mile) county in Texas. Established 1931 and named for an earlier town (10 miles north) which legend says was named by a French surveyor-prospector after his home on the Riviera. With population of 42, Mentone has no water system. (Water is hauled in.) Nor does it have a bank, doctor, hospital, newspaper, lawyer, civic club or cemetery. There are only two recorded graves in county. Some Indian skeletons, artifacts are found. Oil, farming, cattle country. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Mentone is the only town in Loving County — the last-organized and most sparsely populated county in Texas — and serves as the smallest county seat in the state. Established in 1931 and named for an earlier settlement that legend traces to a French surveyor homesick for the Riviera, the town has famously done without a water system (water is hauled in), a bank, doctor, hospital, newspaper, or cemetery. It endures on oil, farming, and cattle in a corner of West Texas so empty the county records only two graves.
Why it matters
Mentone captures the extreme thinness of settlement in the arid Trans-Pecos, where the machinery of county government persists in a place that never gathered enough people to build a town around it.
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