Howard County Texas map
32.30° N · 101.44° W · County seat: Big Spring · 904 sq mi
Howard County is named for a congressman but defined by a hole in a limestone draw. The big spring that gave the county seat its name was the only dependable water for a long stretch of the southern plains, which is why the Comanche trail, the cattle herds, the Texas and Pacific Railway and finally I-20 all bent toward this spot.
Big Spring sits south of center, on I-20. Scenic Mountain rises on the southwest edge of the city.
Where Howard County is
Howard is the eastern gate of the Permian Basin, where the oil country begins to give way to the ranch country of the Rolling Plains. Borden County is north, Mitchell east, Sterling southeast, Glasscock south, Martin west and Dawson northwest.
The county straddles a genuine physiographic boundary. North of Big Spring the land is the flat southern edge of the Llano Estacado; south of it the ground breaks into the mesas and draws of the northern Edwards Plateau. Beals Creek, a tributary of the Colorado River, runs through the middle of Big Spring and separates the two. That break is why the county has a hill worth naming in a region that otherwise has none.
Midland is 43 miles southwest on I-20, Odessa 63 miles, San Angelo 83 miles southeast and Lubbock 91 miles northwest. The county was created from Bexar County land in 1876 and organized in 1882, taking the name of Volney E. Howard, who represented Texas in Congress from 1849 to 1853.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| Big Spring (county seat) | City | 26,310 |
| Coahoma | Town | 931 |
| Forsan | City | 223 |
Coahoma sits 10 miles east of Big Spring on I-20 and Business 20. Forsan is a small oil-patch town southeast of Big Spring off SH-350; its name is a contraction of "four sands," for the producing zones drilled under it in the 1920s. Sand Springs, Knott and Vealmoor are unincorporated. Three-quarters of the county's residents live in Big Spring.
Roads
- I-20 – crosses the county east–west through Big Spring and Coahoma, with Business I-20 following the old highway through downtown.
- US-87 – the north–south route, running from Lamesa down through Big Spring and on toward San Angelo.
- SH-350 – southeast from Big Spring past Forsan toward the Sterling County line.
- SH-176 – west from Big Spring toward Andrews.
- FM 700 – the loop road around the north and west sides of Big Spring; FM 669 runs north toward Ackerly.
I-20 and US-87 cross inside Big Spring, which is why the town has always been a stopping place rather than a destination.
The spring, Scenic Mountain and the refinery
The spring itself is in Comanche Trail Park on the south side of Big Spring, in a limestone draw that held water year-round when nothing else on the plains did. Comanche raiding parties used it on the route south into Mexico, buffalo hunters and cattle drovers used it after them, and the railroad's decision to build a division point here in 1881 made the town. Municipal pumping lowered the water table and the spring stopped flowing on its own decades ago; it is now maintained as a pool at the historic site.
Two miles west, Big Spring State Park occupies the top and sides of Scenic Mountain, a limestone-capped mesa standing roughly 200 feet above the surrounding country. A paved three-mile loop road circles the rim and there are walking trails and picnic shelters along it; from the top you can see most of the county and, on a clear day, the flare stacks toward Midland. It is one of the small Civilian Conservation Corps parks built in the 1930s, and it is the only state park in this part of West Texas.
The other landmark is industrial. A refinery has operated on the east side of Big Spring since the interwar years and is one of the very few in West Texas — most Permian crude leaves the basin by pipeline for the Gulf Coast, so a plant that processes it where it comes out of the ground is unusual. Alongside it the county carries the former Webb Air Force Base, a pilot training field that closed in 1977 and now operates as Big Spring McMahon-Wrinkle Airport and an industrial park, and a federal correctional complex on part of the same ground. The 2024 Census estimate puts the county at 30,833, below the 2020 count.