Schleicher County Texas map
30.90° N · 100.53° W · County seat: Eldorado · 1,311 sq mi
Schleicher County has 1,311 square miles, one incorporated town and 2,451 people — fewer than two residents per square mile. It was cut whole out of Crockett County in 1887 and left without a government for fourteen years, and it has never had a railroad, a reservoir or an interstate. What it has is grass, and the sheep, goats and cattle that live on it.
Eldorado sits near the center of the county at the crossing of US-277 and US-190. Everything else on this map is ranch road and county road.
Where Schleicher County is
The county sits on the southwestern Edwards Plateau with seven neighbors: Tom Green County north, Concho County northeast, Menard County east, Kimble County southeast, Sutton County south, Crockett County west and Irion County northwest.
San Angelo is 40 miles north and is where most Schleicher County business gets done — hospital, airport, farm supply and the nearest large grocery. Everything else is far: Kerrville 101 miles southeast, Del Rio 108 miles southwest and Abilene 117 miles northeast. I-10 runs across Sutton County to the south, about 25 miles below the county line.
Eldorado
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Eldorado | City (county seat) | 1,590 |
Eldorado holds nearly two thirds of the county and is the only incorporated place. It grew up as the trading point for the surrounding ranches after the county organized in 1901, and the county courthouse on the square is still the town's largest building. The rest of the population lives on scattered ranch headquarters; there is no second town to speak of.
Two highways
- US-277 – the north–south route, entering from Tom Green County and running through Eldorado to Sonora and eventually Del Rio and the Rio Grande.
- US-190 – the east–west route, crossing from Crockett County toward Menard and Brady.
Those are the only two federal routes in the county, and they cross in Eldorado. Beyond them, movement is on farm-to-market and county roads that mostly serve one or two ranches each. A driver crossing Schleicher County on US-277 covers roughly 40 miles and passes one town.
Ranch country
This is sheep and goat country, and for most of the twentieth century Schleicher was one of the counties that made Texas the largest wool and mohair producer in the United States. Angora goats do well on the browse of the plateau — live oak, shin oak and juniper — where cattle alone would struggle. Shearing crews, wool warehouses and predator control shaped the local economy more than any crop ever did. Ranch sizes are measured in sections rather than acres, which is why the population density is what it is.
The county is named for Gustav Schleicher, a German-born engineer who came to Texas in the 1840s with the Adelsverein colonists, worked as a surveyor and railroad engineer, and served in Congress from Texas until his death in 1879. He never lived here; the legislature attached his name to a block of land carved from Crockett County eight years later.
The YFZ Ranch
The one national news story ever to come out of Schleicher County involved a piece of ranchland a few miles north of Eldorado. In 2003 a group connected with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints bought the property and built a compound there, including a large white limestone temple visible from the county road. Texas authorities raided the site in April 2008 and removed several hundred children; the removals were later overturned by the appellate courts, but criminal prosecutions followed. The state seized the property in 2014. For a county of 2,451 people it was an unlikely landmark, and it remains the thing outsiders most often associate with Eldorado.