Jeff Davis County Texas map
30.63° N · 104.19° W · County seat: Fort Davis · 2,265 sq mi
Jeff Davis County contains the Davis Mountains, the highest range lying entirely inside Texas, and 1,996 people. Its county seat, Fort Davis, is unincorporated and sits at about 5,050 feet, which makes it the highest town in the state; the only incorporated place in the county is Valentine, population 72.
Fort Davis sits in the southeast quarter where SH-17 and SH-118 meet. Mount Locke and the observatory are 16 miles northwest of it on SH-118.
Where Jeff Davis County is
The county was separated from Presidio County in 1887 and named for Jefferson Davis, who as U.S. Secretary of War in the 1850s authorized the frontier post that gave Fort Davis its name. It is the mountain block of the Trans-Pecos, bounded on the north by three counties — Culberson, Reeves and Pecos — with Brewster County southeast, Presidio County south and Hudspeth County to the northwest.
Marfa is 24 miles southwest of Fort Davis and Alpine 37 miles southeast; those two towns supply most of the county's groceries and fuel. El Paso is 157 miles northwest and Odessa 137 miles northeast.
Settlements
| Place | Status | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Fort Davis (county seat) | Unincorporated | — |
| Valentine | Town — the only incorporated place | 72 |
Jeff Davis is one of a small number of Texas counties with no incorporated city. Fort Davis, the seat and by far the largest settlement, has never incorporated; the county and its special districts handle what a city government would elsewhere. Valentine, on US-90 and the Union Pacific line 36 miles west of Fort Davis, incorporated as a town and still counts 72 residents. The rest of the county's people live on ranches, at Bloys Camp Meeting ground, and in the scattered houses along the Davis Mountains roads.
Roads
- SH-17 – the north–south route through Fort Davis: north down Limpia Canyon to Balmorhea, I-10 and Pecos; south to Marfa and US-90.
- SH-118 – northwest from Fort Davis past the Davis Mountains State Park turn and McDonald Observatory to Kent and I-10; south from Fort Davis to Alpine.
- SH-166 – the western half of the Davis Mountains Scenic Loop, leaving SH-118 above the observatory and returning to SH-17 south of Fort Davis. The full loop runs roughly 75 miles.
- I-10 – clips the far northern corner of the county between Van Horn and Kent, the fastest way in from El Paso.
- US-90 – crosses the southwestern corner through Valentine on its way from Van Horn to Marfa.
The Davis Mountains
The Davis Mountains are the eroded remains of volcanic activity roughly 35 million years ago, and they are the highest range contained entirely within Texas. Mount Livermore, also called Baldy Peak, reaches 8,378 feet and stands on private land inside the Nature Conservancy's Davis Mountains Preserve. Elevation is what makes the county habitable: Fort Davis gets more rain and much cooler nights than the desert 3,000 feet below it, and grama grasslands here have carried cattle since the 1880s.
Davis Mountains State Park, four miles northwest of Fort Davis on SH-118, has a campground, the Skyline Drive along a ridge above it, and Indian Lodge — a white adobe hotel built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and still operated by the state as a park lodge.
McDonald Observatory and the dark sky
The University of Texas built McDonald Observatory on Mount Locke, at about 6,790 feet, using a bequest from a Paris, Texas banker; the first large telescope there began work in 1939. The domes on Mount Locke and neighboring Mount Fowlkes now include the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, one of the largest optical telescopes in the world, and the visitor center on SH-118 runs daytime solar viewing and evening star parties.
The observatory is here because the air is dry, the elevation is high and there are almost no lights. Jeff Davis and its neighbors have adopted outdoor lighting rules to protect the sky, and the region has been recognized as one of the largest dark-sky reserves in the world. The other reason to come is Fort Davis National Historic Site: the stone and adobe buildings of the army post established in 1854 to guard the San Antonio–El Paso road, garrisoned after the Civil War by Buffalo Soldier regiments and abandoned in 1891, now one of the best-preserved frontier forts in the Southwest.