Atascosa County Texas map

The county starts about 20 miles south of downtown San Antonio and runs 40 miles further into the South Texas plains. Eight counties border it — more than most: Bexar to the north, Wilson northeast, Karnes east, Live Oak southeast, McMullen south, La Salle southwest, Frio west and Medina northwest.

The land is low rolling country sloping to the southeast, cut by the Atascosa River, which leaves the county at its southeastern corner on its way to the Frio. The highest ground, about 810 feet, is a rise on the Bexar County line between Lytle and Somerset; the lowest is the river bottom in the southeast. San Antonio's city centre is 37 miles north of the county's midpoint in a straight line, and Atascosa is counted in the San Antonio metropolitan area.

Atascosa was cut from Bexar County in 1856, one of a series of counties carved out of Bexar's enormous original district as settlement moved south. The 2020 census counted 48,981 people; the Census Bureau estimated about 52,800 by 2024, with most of the growth at the Bexar County end around Lytle and along US-281.

Pleasanton is the biggest town but not the county seat: Jourdanton, laid out on the railroad in 1909, took the courthouse from Pleasanton the following year and has kept it since. Pleasanton calls itself the birthplace of the cowboy, on the argument that the vaquero tradition of the brush country was where the American cowboy came from, and marks it with a statue on the main street. Lytle straddles the corner into Medina and Bexar counties on I-35 and is filling with San Antonio commuters. Charlotte and Christine are small farm towns in the west and south; the rest of the population lives in unincorporated communities such as Leming, Campbellton and Peggy.

The deep sandy soils in the north of the county grow crops that will not do well on the surrounding clay. Poteet has been the centre of Texas strawberry growing for a century and the legislature named it the state's strawberry capital; the Poteet Strawberry Festival, held each spring since the 1940s, is the largest single event in the county. Watermelons and peanuts have been the other cash crops, and Atascosa has ranked among the leading peanut-producing counties in Texas.

Cattle use the rest. Most of the county south and west of the towns is mesquite and huisache range broken by improved pasture, run in ranches rather than farms. There is a stock auction at Pleasanton, and hunting leases for white-tailed deer and quail are a real part of landowner income.

The Eagle Ford shale runs in a band across South Texas from the Mexican border toward East Texas, and Atascosa sits on its northern, oil-rich edge. Drilling took off after 2010, and the effect on the county was less about wells than about traffic: Pleasanton and Jourdanton picked up service yards, sand and water haulers, man camps and hotels, and the FM roads took a beating from truck weights they were never built for. Activity has swung with the oil price since, but the frac sand mines, gas gathering plants and pipeline corridors put in during the boom are permanent features of the map now, and the county's share of the shale keeps a share of its tax base.