Roberts County Texas map
35.84° N · 100.84° W · County seat: Miami · 924 sq mi
Roberts County had 827 residents in 2020, the eighth-smallest count of any county in Texas, spread across 924 square miles — fewer than one person per square mile. Miami is the only incorporated town, two highways cross the county and nothing else is paved, and Roberts is one of the last counties in Texas to remain entirely dry.
Miami sits just below centre on US-60. The dark line of timber running west to east across the north of the frame is the Canadian River.
Where Roberts County is
Roberts is in the northeastern quarter of the Panhandle, one county row below the Oklahoma line and two columns in from it. It touches eight Texas counties and no other state: Ochiltree north, Lipscomb northeast, Hemphill east, Wheeler southeast, Gray south, Carson southwest, Hutchinson west and Hansford northwest.
Amarillo is about 70 miles southwest, which makes it the shopping and hospital town for the whole county. Pampa, in Gray County, is nearer for fuel and groceries. Lubbock is 167 miles southwest.
The county takes its name from two brothers: John S. Roberts, who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, and Oran Milo Roberts, attorney general of the Republic and later the seventeenth governor of Texas. It was created in 1876 out of the Bexar District and organized in 1889.
Miami, and nothing else
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Miami | City · county seat | 537 |
Miami holds roughly two-thirds of the county's people. It grew as a section house and shipping point on the Santa Fe railroad, which still runs through town, and it kept the county seat when the courthouse was built. The rest of the population lives on ranches and in a handful of unincorporated crossroads settlements.
Roads
- US-60 – the main route, entering from Carson County in the southwest, running northeast through Miami and on to Canadian in Hemphill County. It parallels the railroad the whole way and is the only paved link to Amarillo.
- SH-70 – crosses US-60 at Miami, running north toward Perryton in Ochiltree County and south to Pampa.
Everything else is county road and ranch track. There is no interstate within 60 miles and no four-lane highway in the county at all.
The Canadian River breaks
Roberts County is flat except along the Canadian River, which crosses the northern part and has cut a wide valley of sand, cottonwood and broken red hills. Creeks running north into the river — the country locals call the breaks — hold the cover that makes this some of the best bobwhite quail range in Texas. That is why the county's most valuable single property is a hunting ranch rather than a farm: the 68,000-acre Mesa Vista Ranch, assembled south of the river, was managed specifically to build up quail, dove and pheasant habitat along the creek beds, with planted cover and water.
The working economy is cattle and dryland wheat, with some natural gas. Grazing land dominates because there is little irrigated ground: the Ogallala is thinner here than under the counties to the west and southwest, and the broken terrain does not take centre pivots. Population peaked in the 1920s and has drifted down since, which is the pattern for the ranching counties along this stretch of the river.