Welcome to Mentone, home of 20 or so good ole boys, a surly old sheriff, Newt's beer palace and a treasure chest of oil and natural gas. Indeed, Mentone, county seat of Loving County in the land of lizards, snakes and blowing dust is the world's richest little poor town. It is also the ONLY town in Loving County, population 112. Its riches lie in flowing natural gas wells and, to a lesser degree, oil deposits. Its poverty is measured in drinking water —there is none. Despite an estimated tax base of $26 million this year, there is not-enough money to purchase a pipeline capable of serving the county's scattered inhabitants. "It would appear, however, that if the property value were evenly distributed among the 112, each could winter on the Riviera. And maybe a Rolls Royce for the sheriff. "Everything here is unique," said a courthouse sage. "Course, there ain't a helluva lot here'." Someone put it this way: . "Only those things, animal or' vegetable, that can withstand dry weather, blazing sun and blistering wind survive and thrive : .. You got to be someone raised in these red hills to live here." Other than a trillion dollars worth of oil and gas, and Newt's oasis, there's not a great deal that can be said for Loving County and its lusty little capital city. The closest thing to a brochure says: "Loving County is located in what is known as the West Texas Desert... It is the least populated county in the United States, with 112 people in an area covering 647 square miles." (That computes out to more than five square miles per person, although a third of the population is clustered in Mentone.) Other than a handful of children, almost everyone is either a rancher, an oilfield worker, a county employee or retired. . "Mentone'... has a post office, schoolhouse, courthouse, a service station and a cafe. The county has no doctor, no hospital, no Chamber of Commerce," the legend discloses. "The Rondo Mills 4-H Club and the Loving County Historical Survey Committee are the only civic organizations." Mentone, incidentally, derives its name from a homesick surveyor from Mentone, France. And the county is the namesake of Oliver Loving, a Kentuckian who succumbed to a Comanche bullet in 1867. The two teachers of the Loving County Independent School District hold court daily for about a dozen children in  grades one through six. The 17 junior high and high schoolers attend class at Wink, 31 miles east in Winkler County.  . . Many of the county officials, while maintaining legal residences in Loving County, find it more convenient to live in Pecos, 23 miles to the south, or Kermit, 32 miles to the east. The problem is the water. Not quantity but quality. An ample supply of underground water exists, but it contains gypsum mineral deposits. Oldtimers say there are only four "good" wells in the county.  The Pecos River water is salty almost to the point of being brine. Although most livestock can drink the water, ranchers as well as residents must haul fresh water from as far away as Pecos. One of the problems, too, is that most of the Loving County land owners live elsewhere. They lease the mineral and surface rights to ranchers and Oil companies. News and Tribune, The | Jefferson City, Missouri | Sunday, September 05, 1976   Is Loving County having a population explosion? Well, not really. It's just that two new people have moved into this sparsely populated West Texas county recently, and this alone is grounds enough for excitement for the county's other 158 residents. Mentone or Loving County have never been burdened with population problems, even during the "boom days when as many as 1,200 persons lived in and around the county seat In fact, the county has never really had any problems to speak of. After all, how many problems can a county have with less than 200 people scattered out over 647 square miles. The history of most cities and counties is recorded in the birth and death of its citizens, as well as the things that has happened between the two events. Not so with Loving County. No one remembers a birth in the city of Mentone and the last recorded birth in the county occurred in the mid-1950s on a ranch with the help of a mid-wife. And as for deaths, the last one occurred March 25, 1964, and that was a plane crash involving an out-of-county resident Before that, no one remembers for sure. There is a good reason for there being no births or deaths within the county. It has no doctor, no hospital and no cemetery, although there are a couple of unmarked graves near Mentone. And another good reason there are so few deaths is the county has only one paved road State Highway 302, that slices across the lower end so this cuts down on traffic deaths. Loving County Sheriff Elgin Jones, one of the youngest sheriffs in the state at 40, is the only law enforcement officer in the county but that doesn't mean he is especially busy. Oh, we have a couple of constables that have been elected," Jones stated as he leaned back in his chair, displaying his high topped cowboy boots with his blue jeans stuffed down inside. "Since I took office in 1965 there has only been a couple of major crimes committed in Loving County and I didn't make arrests in either of those," he recalled, "One was a mercury theft out in the oil field and the other was when some one broke into the courthouse and school. "The feller that got into the courthouse and school really didn't take anything that we could find' Jones explained.  Jones' office on the first floor of the courthouse is small, but it reflects what takes up most of his time — assessing and collecting county taxes. "Really, that only keeps me busy about four or five months out of the year," he said. His office only slightly resembles the office of a county sheriff with the usual bulletin board stuck off in one corner. There isn't a gun in sight. Upstairs, Sheriff Jones shows off his neatly kept "mini jail" and it should have been neatly kept. The sheriff says he only uses it once or twice a year. "Once  or  twice a year somebody stops here late in the day with car trouble or something of that nature, needing a place to spend the night/' Jones related. "I'm always glad to let them stay in the jail if they don't mind. After all, it's not being used and the closest motel is more than 30 miles away. "Every once in awhile I have to put someone in the jail to let them sober up," he said, "but that happens most everywhere." Prior to moving here in 1953, Jones gained his law enforcement experience the same way that other Mentone citizens are gaining theirs — helping out the local officers. "I grew up in East Texas in a small town," he related, "and every so often the sheriff would come by the house and want me to go with him to make an arrest or assist at a roadblock. "That's about the only experience I had before 1 was elected sheriff here," he said, but I found it very helpful I sometimes do the same thing here because its never a good idea for an officer to make an arrest by himself or try to man a roadblock by himself. Jones also has the distinction of probably being the only sheriff in Texas who never  had to present a criminal case to the grand jury. District Judge J. H. Stanley was forced to move a civil trial to from Mentone to Monahans in 1964 because he said the selection of a jury would have had to halt the economic life of the county. The Texas Almanac says only 28 persons are employed within the county. The lack of population is probably makes Mentone and Loving County unique. But how small is Mentone? When Enda Clayton, Loving County Clerk, was asked the question she said "Just a minute and I'll count them. Looking out the window from her office she spotted a house at the southwest corner of the town and said, " One, Two, Three......After making a complete circle, returning to the starting point, she said confidently there were 40 people living in Mentone. Loving County is probably the only county in the state that doesn't have a single mite of county designated roads. "Oh we have several miles of public roads " Mrs. Clayton related, "They're not actually county roads but the public uses them and the county keeps them graded. The lack of county services also accounts for a low annual budget of $86,384. The tax rate is $15 per $100 valuation assessed at 23 per cent of actual value. The only bonded indebtedness the county has ever had was in 1835 to build the courthouse. Those have long since been paid off. Has Loving County always had it so good? Not according to Jess Massingil, a former county commissioner and the only resident of Mentone who lived there when the county was reorganized in 1931. Massingill completed 50 years as an oil field pumper recently and 40 of those years have been spent in Loving County. "When I came to Loving County in 1929 there wasn't a Mentone.  Massingiil recalled.  Everything was at Porterville, down in the valley by the river, it was the oil play that really started the town of Mentone. Everyone just seemed to congregate here. The pioneer Loving County resident said it was the increase in oil values and population that started people to thinking about the reorganization of the county. The county was organized the first time in 1893 but it failed to materialize because farmers started moving out a few years later and the area went back under the jurisdiction of Reeves County. * * * "There must have been a thousand people living around: Mentone when we organized the second time," Massingill said "Things were really booming around here for awhile. Is 1930 and 1931 there was a couple of drug stores here as well as a hotel, several cafes, two doctors, and a pool hall. We even had a prescription druggist.  But like every other oil boon in West Texas, workers now began to move on to greener pastures and the population of the county started to  gradually decline that has continued since then. The first Loving County Courthouse was a small sheet  iron building that stood in front of the present courthouse. Massingill said the county was so broke that county officials had to be paid in script. "It wouldn't surprise me if some of that script was still floating around someplace." Massingill served as a county commissioner for 14 years during those trying times. He laughed as be said the commissioners didn't give too much thought to the makeup of the county, mainly because we didn't know what we were doing." "We did insist on a countywide school district though," he said. "We gave a lot of thought to the school district, mainly because we felt the county may not have a large population until sometime in the future and we didn't want any of those 'little red school houses' popping up all over the county in several school districts. Even with a continually declining population, Massingill thinks the outlook for Loving County is bright He said exploration for deep gas production was gradually moving northward toward the county and the oil play has shown no signs of letting up. Massingill and Jones are in accord on one thing. If Mentone and Loving County ever dies again it will be caused by lack of water. Mentone residents haul in all their drinking water from nearby fresh water wells and both men feel it is too late for any kind of municipal water supply to be installed. "If the county would have built a city water system when Mentone was on the boom," Jones said. "I firmly believe  that a lot of the people who came here would have stayed and retired and we would have had a fair sized town. "But right now, it's Just too late and this may kill the town eventually," Jones said. Odessa American, The | Odessa, Texas | Sunday, August 31, 1969