Knox County Texas map
33.61° N · 99.73° W · County seat: Benjamin · 856 sq mi
Knox County is named for Henry Knox, the first secretary of war of the United States, a man with no connection to Texas who died 30 years before the county was drawn. Its seat, Benjamin, had 198 people in 2020 — smaller than either Munday or Knox City, the two towns that hold most of the county's population.
Knox County on the Rolling Plains. US-82 crosses east–west through Benjamin; US-277 runs northeast through Munday and Goree.
Where Knox County is
The county lies between the head of the Wichita River and the upper forks of the Brazos, 74 miles southwest of Wichita Falls and 80 miles north of Abilene. Six counties border it: Foard north, Baylor east, Throckmorton at the southeast corner, Haskell south, Stonewall at the southwest corner and King west.
The Brazos River runs along part of the southern boundary after the Salt Fork and the Double Mountain Fork come together just west of the county, and the North and South Forks of the Wichita rise in the northern half. Between the drainages the land is level enough to farm, and it is farmed hard.
Four towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Munday | City | 1,251 |
| Knox City | Town | 1,066 |
| Benjamin (county seat) | City | 198 |
| Goree | City | 162 |
| Rest of county | Unincorporated | 676 |
Roads
- US-82, running with State Highway 114, crosses the county east–west through Benjamin, between Seymour in Baylor County and Guthrie in King County.
- US-277 cuts the southeast corner diagonally, serving Munday and Goree on the route from Haskell to Seymour.
- State Highway 6 comes south from Crowell in Foard County through Benjamin and continues toward Rule.
- State Highway 222 links Knox City with Munday and with O'Brien across the line in Haskell County.
US-82 and State Highway 6 cross at Benjamin — the reason a town of under 200 people is the seat of government.
A county seat of 198
Benjamin was platted in the 1880s at the geographic centre of the county and won the seat when Knox County organised in 1886. It kept the courthouse and lost everything else: the railroad went to Munday and Knox City instead, and the two rail towns grew past it within a generation. Today Benjamin has the courthouse, the county jail, a school and little more, and it is among the smallest county seats in Texas.
Munday and Knox City sit on the eastern side of the Seymour aquifer, and irrigation from that shallow groundwater put this county into row crops early — cotton and wheat in the dry fields, and vegetables and melons in the irrigated ones, with packing sheds in both towns. Farming, not oil, has kept the county's population above 3,000 while several neighbours have fallen under 1,000.