Jacob Harrison did what he thought kids from rural West Texas are supposed to do. He went away to college and didn't look back. But after working in Central Texas for a while, he called home with a confession. "There are too many trees," he said. "You can't see the sky."
Harrison, now 26, is back in Winkler County, drawn by a job in the aptly named community of Notrees.
But he is in the minority. The 2010 Census confirmed what anyone passing through the scrublands of West Texas already knew: People are leaving, and no one is taking their place, even with oil at more than $100 a barrel. The people who remain often drive an hour or more to visit a doctor, buy a pair of jeans or see a movie.
So you might wonder why anyone is still there, in this place where natural beauty is defined by dry creek beds and scraggly mesquite, where public transit is a school bus and Starbucks is a punch line.
"The greatest sunsets. The stars are just right there. You hear the coyotes howling," says Billy Burt Hopper, sheriff of Loving County, home to 82 people and the least-populated county in the United States.
"It's the last frontier."
Texas recorded the largest population growth in the nation over the past decade, adding 4.5 million people for a total of 25.1 million. But 79 of its 254 counties lost people, all but a handful of them west of Interstate 35. Even more would have lost population if not for the decade's phenomenal Latino growth; the number of Anglos declined in 162 Texas counties, including much of West Texas and the Panhandle. (read more)
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