Welcome to the smallest county in America

I may say that I grew up in a small town, but compared to places like the ones in this Mental Floss post, my hometown is an absolute metropolis. That article covers a small sampling of the country’s tiny towns.

What about the tiniest county, though? That honor goes to Loving County, Texas, a place with only one community, one ghost town, and sixty-seven people. You could fit all of those people in a room. In fact, all of them probably fit in the church in Mentone. A minister visits the church on Saturdays to deliver services, but other than that there’s not much there.

Let’s look at their demographics. As of the 2000 census (2010 stats aren’t out yet), Loving County had 67 people, 31 households, and 70 housing units. I have a feeling people have been moving out in recent years, though apparently the county cast 79 votes in the 2008 presidential election. Maybe the population is rising after all, despite the 2008 estimate of 42. When a town’s that small, every person counts.

This strikes me as strange, though.

The median income for a household in the county was $40,000, and the median income for a family was $53,750. Males had a median income of $25,833 versus $0 for females. The per capita income for the county was $24,084. (straight from the article)

I cannot make that up. Since the only practical way for that statistic to be true is to make every woman be a stay-at-home woman/wife/mother, I wonder what life in this county is really like. On the bright side, no one in Loving County lives below the poverty level, though that says more about lack of residents than it does about the actual wealth of the residents.

I won’t be moving there anytime soon.