Smallest counties in Texas

A county can be small in land or small in people, and in Texas the two lists barely overlap. The smallest counties by area are mostly in the eastern half of the state, where early settlement produced tightly packed counties — and some of them are now booming suburbs. The smallest counties by population are almost all in West Texas and the Panhandle, where large counties have very few residents. 57 Texas counties have fewer than 5,000 people.

Rockwall County is the smallest county in Texas by area at about 149 square miles, and a significant share of it is covered by Lake Ray Hubbard. It was created in 1873 from Kaufman County and named for an underground formation of rock that early settlers believed was a man-made wall — geologists later identified it as a natural sandstone dike.

For most of its history Rockwall was a quiet farming county. Today it is part of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, with about 140,738 residents and a density of roughly 945 people per square mile — one of the most densely populated counties in Texas. It shows that a small county is not necessarily a rural one.

Loving County, on the New Mexico line in the Permian Basin, has only about 52 residents spread across 673 square miles. It is regularly cited as the least-populated county in the contiguous United States. Its only community, Mentone, serves as the county seat.

The county was named for Oliver Loving, the cattleman who pioneered the Goodnight–Loving Trail with Charles Goodnight. It was first created in 1887, organized briefly and then disorganized amid allegations of fraud, and finally reorganized in 1931 — making it the last Texas county to be organized. Even with so few residents, Loving County maintains a full county government: a county judge, commissioners, a sheriff and a clerk. In recent years oil and gas drilling has brought large numbers of daily workers who live elsewhere.

People sometimes ask why Texas doesn't merge its least-populated counties. The Texas Constitution makes consolidation difficult, county identity runs deep, and each county seat anchors local schools, courts and civic life. Many sparsely populated counties also hold significant oil, gas or wind revenue, which funds roads and services without heavy local taxes. The result is a state with 254 counties — more than any other — ranging from a few dozen residents to several million.

Small-population counties reward slow travel: historic courthouses, local museums, dark night skies and ranch landscapes. Use the interactive map to locate them, or compare them against the largest counties in Texas.