What are the top 10 smallest/largest counties in population?

[MissCatholic]

Anywhere i can find out?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Largest is Los Angeles county. Smallest is Loving County, Texas, which has only 67 people. 2nd largest is Cook, Illinois, but I don't know about smallest after that.

[minionofmidas]

1 Los Angeles CA 9.519 mio
2 Cook IL 5.377 mio
3 Harris TX 3.401 mio
4 Maricopa AZ 3.072 mio
5 Orange CA 2.846 mio
6 San Diego CA 2.814 mio
7 Kings NY 2.465 mio
8 Dade FL 2.253 mio
9 Queens NY 2.229 mio
10 Dallas TX 2.219 mio
...
3067 Loup NE 712
3068 Blaine NE 583
3069 San Juan CO 558
3070 McPherson NE 533
3071 Petroleum MT 493
3072 Arthur NE 444
3073 Kenedy TX 414
3074 King TX 356
3075 Kalawao HI 147 (administered by Maui County though)
3076 Loving TX 67

[MissCatholic]

In Loving County 2004
Bush = 65
Kerry = 12
Other = 3

80 votes - how many voting booths do you think?

[jimrtex]

In Loving County 2004
Bush = 65
Kerry = 12
Other = 3

80 votes - how many voting booths do you think?

4 precincts, one for each commissioner district.



It looks like Mentone has been divided between the 4 districts.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

I'm surprised that a group of 70 Libertarians haven't thought of moving to Loving County so that they could at least win one county

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

I found a great history of Loving Co.:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~txloving/history.htm

"The county closed its school system in 1972 because only two students were enrolled and its cost was $146,000 a year; "

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

3076 Loving TX 67

In Loving County 2004
Bush = 65
Kerry = 12
Other = 3

80 votes - how many voting booths do you think?

Hey, that was a pretty good turnout.

[minionofmidas]

3076 Loving TX 67

In Loving County 2004
Bush = 65
Kerry = 12
Other = 3

80 votes - how many voting booths do you think?

Hey, that was a pretty good turnout.

Compare 2000.
I think they had a problem with multiple voting there - ie voting once in Loving Co and once outside.

[jimrtex]

3076 Loving TX 67

In Loving County 2004
Bush = 65
Kerry = 12
Other = 3

80 votes - how many voting booths do you think?

Hey, that was a pretty good turnout.

It was down from past elections, I think they have been up around 300% turnout.

[jimrtex]

Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SUN 12/04/94
Section: TEXAS MAGAZINE

WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?/No stoplights, no malls, no movie theaters, NOCROWDS -- and that suits folks just fine in the nation's least populouscounty

By CAROL RUST
Staff

The sunset spreads out on the West Texas horizon like a melting pat of butter on a giant pancake that extends as far as the eye can see in any direction -- and then some. An arid breeze whips up, rattling clumps of unnamed vegetation that can grow roots in rock, stubborn flora that survive prolonged stints of sweltering sun and months on end with minuscule amounts of moisture. Inhospitable thickets of thorn harbor rattlesnakes and jack rabbits alike.

A knot of buzzards hunkers over the latest road kill on Texas 302, a two-lane ribbon of asphalt that dissects the dry, rolling prairie of West Texas south of the New Mexico border. It is one of the least-traveled state highways, originating in Odessa and ending abruptly a few miles west of a tiny town that few folks have heard of, where nodding oil pump jacks and an occasional circling hawk dot the horizon.

An 18-wheeler thunders down the highway, then disappears over the next rise as quickly as it appeared.

Aside from the rustling of a red fox slinking from one hiding place in a stand of mesquite to another, there is no sound except the soft wind, which must travel seeming light years to rustle a curtain or flap laundry on a clothesline somewhere. The scene is one of miles and miles of miles and miles.

Welcome to Loving County .

It's a stark land, populated by men with no-frills names like Skeet and Punk and Newt. It's been the least-populated county in the United States almost since it was established in 1887, and nobody's looking for the current population of 141 to grow anytime soon. A handful of people own all the land in the county , and no one has any for sale. New faces upset the voting, longtime residents say. Besides, there's scarcely enough water for the people and cows there now.

In other parts of the state, office employees pool their money in hopes of winning the state lottery; in Loving County 's lone town -- Mentone -- nearly the entire population of 25, plus some "outsiders" who don't live in the official city limits, pool their money in similar hopes. There's a sign-up sheet in a spiral notebook by the cash register in the town's only store, staffed by proprietor Wanema Hopper and her spoiled white poodle, Lucky. She gets copies made of the Quick Pick lottery tickets to distribute to participants who request them. She does this efficiently, just as she rings up beer or writes out cash receipts for gas. No use wasting someone's time.

But after that customer leaves, she has nothing but time on her hands until the next one comes in or the "girls" from the courthouse next door gather for an afternoon gossip session.

So far, the town has won only $3 , and residents decided to put that back into the pot to buy more tickets rather than distribute a handful of pennies to every contributor. But they're confident that one day, Lady Luck will visit Loving County . Few other folks do.

Not that most of its citizens lack for money. Until a few years ago, it was the richest county per capita in Texas. But three millionaires who'd been on the Loving County tax rolls died off, and since then residents have had to be satisfied living in the second or third (they're not sure which) richest county in the state. Nothing much changed except for the designation, which nobody really cared about, anyway.

As for being in the least-populated county in the country -- well, they didn't need any outsiders coming in to tell them that. A wiry man has one boot on the rear bumper of his pickup, his arm hanging off the truck's tailgate. He is talking to another man who leans on the truck, a light-blue cap on his head and a pinch of Skoal in his lower lip.

"It was a good-looking little trailer, I'll tell you that," the first man says. "What'd you say he wanted for it?"

Both men wear jeans and long-sleeve shirts in the late-morning heat that rarely leaves the area until around Thanksgiving. The skin of their necks, faces and broad hands is weathered from years of exposure to the sun.

They talk a few minutes more about the horse trailer someone had for sale awhile back, then amble into the A&G Cafe, frightening a skittish dog that was asleep in the shadows of an overhang by the door.

They nod and say "Mornin' " to the folks assembled inside. Since waitress Debbie Brooks is talking to customers at a table in the corner, the two men automatically walk behind the counter and grab tall, plastic tumblers from a stack on a shelf, noisily filling them with ice from a giant ice chest and then with tea from a pitcher on the counter.

Brooks knows better than to bring menus to the two on a Wednesday. That's because Wednesday is steak day, and the only things she needs to know are how they want their meat cooked and whether they want a baked potato or fries. Like most of the men she serves, they want fries.

As Brooks carries an arm load of dirty dishes to the back, she pushes a swinging door to the kitchen open with her rear end, revealing about 35 red rib-eye steaks laid out on a wooden kitchen block just inside the door, each with a dollop of margarine on it.

[jimrtex]

Brooks gets the steaks cut fresh every Wednesday morning at a meat shop in Wink, 30 miles away in Winkler County where she lives, before driving to the cafe, the only restaurant in Loving County . In the five years that she and her mother-in-law, Ann Hogue, have been holding steak specials on Wednesdays, there's never been a single slab of meat left over at the end of the day. That's partly because Hogue can feel, in her bones, when a rare steak is turning medium rare as she watches it hiss on the grill, and it's always cooked just right.

Along the restaurant counter is Loving County 's version of a salad bar: a medium-size bowl of lettuce, a plate with 20 or 30 tomato slices, a plate of carrot sticks and green onions, and small bowls of jalapenos, black olives and grated Cheddar.

As midday approaches, the modest cafe -- the only place to sit down and eat between Kermit, 33 miles to the east, and Pecos, 23 miles south, aside from someone's supper table -- quickly fills up. Deputy sheriff Charles McGoldrick and his wife, Debbie, sit at a table, she with a fly swatter next to her plate for the flies that get thick in the area before the first cold spell. Folks are hoping for a couple of good freezes this year -- which is what they usually get anyway, sometimes with a little snow -- because the flies have been particularly pesky, and cold weather's the only thing that will get rid of them.

During lunch, McGoldrick leaves his sheriff's department Suburban parked facing the road and just a little off of it, so that folks driving through might think he's sitting in it, ready with the radar gun. When you are the only deputy in 671 square miles of sand and tumbleweed, you come up with these things.

A sign at the cash register says, "We guarantee fast service no matter how long it takes." The glass counter underneath contains exactly three red peanut patties, a half-empty box of Paydays, several packs of gum and six beef jerky strips. Jars of local honey are for sale.

The lunchtime gathering is one form of entertainment in a place where entertainment is hard to come by. During football season, folks will drive to Wink High School games if a Loving County student is on the team or in the band, says county clerk Juanita Busby. This isn't one of those years.

The Loving County 4-H Club allows children of all ages to join, rather than limiting membership to school-age children, because there's little else for kids to do, club sponsor and county treasurer Jamie Jones says. It makes for some lively club meetings, with rambunctious preschoolers squirming in folding metal chairs as older club members vote on how much to charge for Frito pies at an upcoming horse show or whether to set a time to close down a carnival or merely close it "whenever we run out of stuff," as club president Jeremy Sparks said at a recent meeting.

There's a small arena off the highway north of Mentone where townsfolk gather for occasional "play days," which are scaled-down rodeos in which children perform. Half the events don't require horses so children who aren't from ranches can participate.

Folks had high hopes for a recreational area in the north part of the county when Red Bluff Dam was built on the Pecos River, creating the county 's only lake. Two separate communities of lake houses sprang up, but they have become increasingly deserted as the lake has dried up.

Another landmark, also human-made, is what some folks call the Loving County Grand Canyon, others simply "the pit." Formed when a company carved out caliche, it's a giant cavern that does kind of resemble a miniature model of the Grand Canyon. Full-size cottonwood trees now grow at the bottom, and locals visit to climb down inside or roast wieners on the edge.

But satellite dishes in many of the grassless yards testify to the main entertainment: television. Without a dish, only two channels are available. One comes in fairly well, while the other ranges from fuzzy to nonexistent. There is no cable.

Back at the noontime lunch scene, an olive-green telephone on an end table by the front door rings, and a customer looks up to see if the proprietors are about. They're in the back, so he answers it.

He hands it to a man who's sitting at his table.

"It's for you," he says. "It's Buddy."

The telephone is for to-go orders and for the convenience of customers, lest they have to walk outside to the corner of the cafe and slip a quarter into the pay phone.

The locals rarely use it, but they sure didn't like it when GTE took the phone out in April 1993 because it wasn't making any money. It wasn't that no one used the phone: It was the only one around for travelers with car trouble, truckers stopping to call home and oil-field workers making reports. It was the only phone available in Mentone after 6 p.m., when the cafe and store close.

But very few people made local calls, since there are very few people to call in a town whose population is at a peak at 25. Since GTE makes money only on local calls, the $10 to $20 a month the Mentone telephone made wasn't enough to cover the cost of maintaining it and collecting from it, GTE officials said.

Then the company sent Hogue a bill for $40 a month, retroactive for two years, "just for having the thing on the corner of my building," Hogue says indignantly. "I told them I couldn't afford to pay that, and they came and took it out."

What GTE didn't realize was that the 141 residents of Loving County weren't going to take the ripping out of their urban status symbol sitting down.

Enter the media. The San Angelo Standard-Times reported the incident, and the Associated Press picked it up. Pretty soon a Dallas TV station visited, along with Channel 11's "Texas Country Reporter."

The repentant telephone company couldn't get another phone installed in Loving County fast enough.

But the Hogues didn't want another GTE telephone, thank you, because "they were so rude" when removing it the week before, Hogue says.

The news reports had also drawn the attention of several independent telephone companies, and one out of Midland agreed to install a telephone on the restaurant's corner and pay Ann Hogue and her husband, Glenn, for the use of the location.

Meanwhile, GTE went ahead and installed its own phone on a building next to the restaurant, but nobody uses it.

"On principle," one of the locals says huffily.

Dickie Putnam looks at his watch, then the sun, and scowls. He likes to get an early start working cattle, and 8:30 a.m. might as well be noon with all the cattle he has to work that day.

He's had trouble finding enough help to round up his cows from the Pecos River bottoms where the sun beats down mercilessly, the bugs bite like rabid animals and there isn't even a whisper of a breeze. He promised the ranch hands a better lunch than last time; cans of sardines at high noon just weren't their idea of vittles, and they weren't shy about letting him know.

He leases land on a 58,000-acre ranch, where erstwhile gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams also grazes cattle. Like most other ranchers in the area, Putnam raises mostly Brahmans and longhorns; both breeds are long-legged and can walk a long way to water, a key to survival in this region. Ranchers in Loving County , which is said to get 11 inches of rainfall per year -- although many think that estimate is high -- must have an expanse of land on which to graze their cattle, or they might as well not even try. In other parts of the state, cattle raisers talk about grazing a cow per number of acres; in West Texas, they graze five cows per section, which is 640 acres. On a particularly good year, a rancher might graze six per section.

Nothing comes easy, either to ranchers or to cattle in Loving County . For Putnam, time is also a rare resource: When he's not ranching, he's the county sheriff.

From his vantage point on a hill, Putnam can see a puff of dust rising from the dry caliche road heading up to the windmill in the distance. A minute later, he can see a ranch hand's pickup pulling a gooseneck trailer behind it.

Once the cowhands assemble, they don their leather chaps, lead their saddled horses from the trailers and tighten the saddle girths under the horses' bellies. As they scatter slowly among the river bottoms on horseback, with thorns tugging at their long-sleeve shirts, it's easy to forget this is the 20th century. With the trucks, trailers and power lines out of view in the background, the men probably don't look much different from the first cowpokes who traveled here.

The first settlers of Loving County in the late 1800s were trail-hardened refugees of the ever-thickening network of barbed wire that stretched westward across the Texas frontier, threatening the existence of ranchers who had always grazed their cows on the open range. Those with property sought to keep others' cattle off their grassy pastures and out of their watering holes. Renegade bulls from the outside diluted their pure breeds and brought down prices.

[jimrtex]

In some parts of the state, this hostility translated into the Fence Wars, a series of fence cuttings and pasture burnings; at least a dozen men were killed in separate incidents of violence that stemmed from the fencing question. But for each man who got ensnarled in these skirmishes, a host more simply pushed farther west to maintain their open-range cattle operation.

Bladen Ramsey was one of them.

He was the youngest son in a family with money. For his 21st birthday, his older brothers got him a pocket watch with a mother-of-pearl face and letters of gold, spelling "B-L-A-D-E-N R-A-M-S-E-Y," instead of numbers. The chain was as thick as a man's finger.

Fancy watch aside, Ramsey was no dandy and could ride with the roughest of them. He owned Ramsey Cattle Co., which maintained a herd that he grazed between Carlsbad, N.M., and the Caprock Escarpment.

One evening as Ramsey and his men were having their evening meal around a campfire, a young cowpoke named Bass Hopper rode up and announced he'd like to ride with them for a while. He drew his pay before they reached Fort Stockton and disappeared.

A few years later, Ramsey and Hopper met up again in a small settlement on the Pecos River called Porterville. The two, and a third man named James Wheat Sr., became business associates, dealing mainly in cattle. They became a powerful trio in Loving County , named for trail boss Oliver Loving , the first man to drive a herd of Texas cattle directly to market in Chicago.

Then oil turned up underneath the rolling prairie in the area in the late '20s, after many other Texas oil patches had dried up. One by one, businesses picked up and moved from Porterville to Mentone, a few miles closer to the wells.

The county 's economic die was cast; the descendents of Wheat, Ramsey and Harper -- and just about everyone else in Loving County -- still make their living primarily from cattle and oil, or work for someone who does.

Hopper's grandson, McKinley Hopper, retired years ago but still acts as justice of the peace when needed and doesn't mind being referred to as Loving County 's unofficial historian. "You know, it doesn't seem to me like I've been around here that long, but I look around and I realize I've been here longer than anyone else," he says. "It's an odd feeling, I can tell you that."

He's seen the county change from the vestiges of the old frontier, when his grandfather never sat in a cafe with his back to the door for fear of getting shot, to the boom days when three-room shotgun houses sprang up after the first oil was discovered. In the 1930s, he attended the Mentone School, which never had enough students to have a football team but had a jukebox that played hit songs while all the students danced during lunch.

He remembers roasting wieners at a birthday party underneath the Pecos River bridge, where it seemed the whole town would gather on long summer afternoons.

He graduated in 1940 along with 11 other high school seniors and saw another surge in the area's population during World War II, when the town of Pecos in nearby Reeves County had one of the largest military training bases in the United States.

Hopper later became the state's youngest county judge, then served as county commissioner for years before assuming his JP duties.

"These responsibilities aren't required often, but someone's got to be able to carry them out when they are," he says.

Like his grandfather before him, Hopper enjoys repeating the tales he's heard over the years about cowboys whose pistols were never far out of reach, when a man's handshake was a deal and the paperwork was just something they took to the courthouse.

There was the time when Loving County quit being a county , he adds mysteriously, warning that some of the story is legend but he's not sure which part. In the late 1800s, three county officials made off with the sum total of the county 's treasury and headed toward El Paso. While crossing the Pecos River on horseback, the three got into an argument, and "only one rode off when they reached the other side," Hopper recalls his grandfather saying, shaking his head.

What remained of the county records was taken to Reeves County for safekeeping; sometime around 1930, Loving County regained its status.

"So if it wasn't the last county to be established in Texas the first time around in 1887, which it was," Hopper says, "it definitely got that distinction the second time around."

But frontier situations don't necessarily confine themselves to frontier times, as any Loving County resident knows.

Take the last murder in the county -- the only one, some folks say.

Just 20 years ago, the county was agog with the news that there had been a shooting over on the Wheat Ranch, and that J.J. Wheat himself had done the shooting.

A truck driver was dead. No eyewitnesses.

Wheat, son of the man who helped settle Loving County , had been angry that oil-rig workers loading precious water to take back to the rigs had left one of the faucets running. Wheat had gone from rig to rig on his ranch that afternoon, warning against any future sloppiness.

Many said he'd been drinking.

Just why the truck driver was in Wheat's yard that night varies, depending on who's telling the story. Some say the truck driver had gone there to use a telephone, others that the two had gotten into an argument over water. Wheat said the truck driver had tried to rob him.

Whatever, the driver died shortly after the shooting.

A grand jury indicted Wheat, whose request for a change of venue was granted. He pleaded no contest and was given 10 years probation. He was still county commissioner when he died in 1989.

The orange-brick Loving County Courthouse is easily the liveliest spot in Mentone, and the most likely location for a fresh pot of coffee, aside from the cafe. It is the pulse of county happenings and an impromptu hospitality suite for the infrequent visitor who might stop in.

Employees can see a strange car coming down the road from a distance and already have debated the identity of the driver by the time it passes the courthouse.

Anyone wanting to disseminate information quickly knows to call the main courthouse number. County clerk Busby usually pounces on the telephone by the end of the first ring or the beginning of the second, tops.

The courthouse has undergone some remodeling recently; commissioners finally decided to take out the county 's one jail cell, which has rarely been used, and replace it with badly needed storage space for county records.

The handsome district court chamber upstairs has never seen a jury trial, but, as treasurer Jones says, "We have some real nice Christmas parties here."

[jimrtex]

But don't let its benign appearance fool you: Loving County is by no means Mayberry.

"Around election time, this place is like the Hatfields and McCoys," says one county resident.

The rift is not between Democrats and Republicans; there's not even a local Republican Party in Loving County . Yet, come election time, residents overwhelmingly vote Republican in presidential, gubernatorial and legislative races.

At the local level, two warring factions formed years ago when the daughter of a local rancher married a man residents call "a troublemaker," who got into politics and used questionable campaign tactics to get voted into county government. Some of those elections were challenged in court, although eventually folks got tired of fighting, one longtime resident says.

Today, the original "troublemaker" and most of his enemies are long dead, but the bitterness is deep-rooted, alive and well. That's why newcomers -- and their political leanings -- are watched closely. One extra vote might tip the scales in either direction.

"Before this area ever saw its first TV, people relied on elections for their entertainment," someone jokes.

The state domicile law allows property owners to vote in the county in which they own land even though they live elsewhere; Loving County residents regularly joke about family reunions around election night.

Elections are contested almost routinely. One candidate lost by a 14-13 vote in a precinct with only 26 voters.

Complicating the scenario is the fact that nearly everyone is kin to everyone else. Sheriff Putnam is married to the Mentone postmaster, Kathy Putnam, and has a stepson who is married to county treasurer Jones. The postmaster's father is the county judge, whose brother is a county commissioner.

County clerk Busby is the daughter of tax assessor-collector Selma Carroll and is married to the county 's chief appraiser, J.W. "Buddy" Busby.

And that's just for starters.

Sure, it can get sticky at times, Judge Don Creager allows, but the good citizens of Loving County will drop everything to run to the aid of another resident when disaster strikes, no matter how they voted in the last election.

"If somebody's house burns down or a storm blows it over, everybody pulls together to help the victims -- even if they ran against each other in the last election," he says. "Once everything gets back to normal, though, they may not speak to each other for another 10 years."

And then there are other occurrences, like baby Amanda, that transcend politics .

When Greg and Sharon McVay decided they would hire a midwife and have their second child in their mobile home south of town, it seemed as if everyone stopping at the courthouse had an opinion about it.

Most residents thought the mother should have the baby at a hospital in Wink, where most other Loving County babies are born, just in case something went wrong.

"You never know," more than one person said more than once.

But Sharon had had her fill of hospitals during her first daughter's birth -- they wouldn't let her go home after the first day, or even let Greg bring in a hamburger for her.

"I just felt I'd be more comfortable at home," she says.

"She was more comfortable, but the whole town was in a turmoil," Busby says, recalling the day four years ago when word got out that Greg had left for Pecos to pick up the midwife. "My goodness, no one got a thing done all day. It's all anyone talked about. Everybody was so worried that something would go wrong."

But by 10 p.m., Amanda had made her debut, and someone borrowed the scales from the post office to weigh her in at 8 pounds. After checking county records, Busby determined that Amanda was the first child to be born inside the county lines for 39 years.

"Everybody kind of felt like Amanda was their baby, too," Busby says, in part to explain the pictures of the little girl at different ages hung on the wall over her desk. "I have them out here, so everybody can watch her grow up."

Like most of the young people who grow up in Loving County , Amanda will probably move away when she grows up, unless she marries a rancher or an oil man. Employment opportunities aren't abundant, and many youths want the bustle of "big city" life in Pecos or beyond.

But there will always be a few who stay behind for what Creager describes as "the laid-back freedom of movement."

No stoplights, no blinking lights, no freeways, no traffic jams, no crowds, no doctors, no lawyers, no malls, no movie theaters, no clubs, no welfare and no hassles.

The folks here just love it.

[Tender Branson]

LA County now has more than 10 million inhabitants.