Reeves County Texas map
31.31° N · 103.71° W · County seat: Pecos · 2,642 sq mi
Reeves County is the ninth-largest county in Texas by area and the northern gate of the Trans-Pecos. Pecos, its seat, claims the first public rodeo, put its name on a cantaloupe, and sits on top of the Delaware Basin oilfield; 50 miles south, spring water pours out of the ground at Balmorhea at a steady 72 degrees.
Pecos sits at the county's center on I-20. The long southern arm of the county reaches down past I-10 to Balmorhea and the foot of the Davis Mountains.
Where Reeves County is
The county was cut out of Pecos County in 1883 and organized the following year, taking the name of George R. Reeves, a Texas legislator and Confederate colonel. It is shaped like a long wedge running southeast from the New Mexico line: Eddy County, New Mexico lies across the northern boundary and keeps Mountain Time, while all of Reeves County is on Central Time.
Clockwise from there, Loving County is northeast, Ward County east, Pecos County southeast, Jeff Davis County south and Culberson County west. The nearest cities of any size are Odessa, 87 miles northeast, and Midland, 107 miles northeast. Alpine is 66 miles south and El Paso is 166 miles northwest.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Pecos (county seat) | City | 12,979 |
| Balmorhea | City | 405 |
| Toyah | Town | 62 |
Those three places hold about 13,400 of the county's 14,748 residents. The rest live on ranches, in the irrigated farm strip along the Pecos River, and at Toyahvale, Saragosa and Verhalen. The Census Bureau's 2024 estimate puts the county at 11,956, a drop that tracks the end of the last drilling surge rather than any change in the towns.
Roads
- I-20 – begins at I-10 near Kent, just west of the county line, and runs northeast through Pecos toward Monahans, Odessa and Midland. Pecos is its first town.
- I-10 – crosses the southern arm of the county past the Balmorhea exit, heading west to Van Horn and east to Fort Stockton.
- US-285 – the north–south route: south from Pecos to Fort Stockton, north across the state line to Carlsbad, New Mexico.
- SH-17 – leaves Pecos southbound, runs through Balmorhea and Toyahvale and climbs into the Davis Mountains to Fort Davis and Marfa.
- SH-302 – east from Pecos through the oilfield to Kermit in Winkler County and on to Odessa.
San Solomon Springs and Balmorhea State Park
At Toyahvale, on SH-17 south of Balmorhea, San Solomon Springs discharge millions of gallons a day of clear artesian water. In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps built a concrete pool around the outlet, and that pool — roughly 1.3 acres, with the spring flowing straight through it — is the reason Balmorhea State Park draws divers and swimmers from across the state. The water holds between about 72 and 76 degrees all year, and fish, including two endangered pupfish species, share the pool with swimmers.
The same springs fed the irrigation ditches that made the Balmorhea and Toyah Creek farms possible. Downstream, Pecos River water supported the melon fields that made the Pecos cantaloupe a recognized name in Texas produce markets from the 1920s onward.
Rodeo and oil
Pecos claims the first public rodeo in the world, staged on July 4, 1883 when ranch hands competed for prize money in the streets. The West of the Pecos Rodeo still runs over the Fourth of July, and the West of the Pecos Museum occupies the old Orient Hotel and saloon downtown.
The modern economy is oil. Reeves County sits over the Delaware Basin, the western half of the Permian Basin, where horizontal wells into the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations turned a quiet ranching county into one of the busiest drilling counties in the United States after 2014. Truck traffic on I-20, US-285 and SH-302 is the most visible result; man camps and new hotels around Pecos are the second.