Sutton County Texas map
30.52° N · 100.51° W · County seat: Sonora · 1,454 sq mi
Interstate 10 runs the width of Sutton County, which makes Sonora the only fuel, food and motel stop on a long stretch between Junction and Ozona. Below the highway the county is ranchland over one of the older natural gas fields on the Edwards Plateau, and a few miles west of town a ranch road leads to the Caverns of Sonora.
Sonora sits on I-10 in the northern half of the county, where US-277 crosses it. The interstate runs roughly east–west across the top third of the map.
Where Sutton County is
Sutton is bordered by Schleicher County north, Menard County northeast, Kimble County east, Edwards County south, Val Verde County southwest and Crockett County west.
San Angelo is 65 miles north up US-277 and is the closest city over 50,000. Del Rio is 83 miles southwest on the same road, Kerrville 88 miles southeast on I-10 and Fredericksburg 99 miles southeast. Sonora is a natural halfway point on the drive between San Antonio and El Paso.
Sonora
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Sonora | City (county seat) | 2,494 |
Sonora is the county's only incorporated place and holds about three quarters of its people. The county courthouse, finished in 1891, was designed by Oscar Ruffini, the San Angelo architect responsible for several of the small limestone courthouses in this part of the state; it is one of the oldest still in use in West Texas. The surrounding blocks of stone commercial buildings date from the same ranching boom.
Roads and the interstate
- I-10 – crosses the county east to west. East it runs to Junction, Kerrville and San Antonio; west to Ozona, Fort Stockton and El Paso. Sonora's exits are the only services for roughly 35 miles in either direction.
- US-277 – the north–south route, from Eldorado and San Angelo down through Sonora to Del Rio and the border.
Having an interstate sets Sutton apart from every county around it: Schleicher, Menard and Irion counties have none. It is also why a town of 2,494 supports a row of truck stops and motels that would otherwise make no sense.
The Caverns of Sonora
West of Sonora, reached by a ranch road running south from I-10, the Caverns of Sonora sit under private ranchland. Cavers pushed past a small natural opening in the 1950s into a series of decorated rooms, and the cave opened to visitors in 1960. It is a live, wet cave, and its reputation rests on the density and fragility of its formations — particularly helictites, calcite growths that curl sideways and upward in defiance of gravity. The best known of them, a fishtail helictite called the Butterfly, was vandalized in 2006 when a visitor broke off one wing.
The cave was named a National Natural Landmark in 1965. Tours run daily along a developed trail; because the passages stay near 71 degrees with very high humidity, the cave feels warmer than most. It is the main reason travelers stop in Sutton County for a reason other than fuel.
Gas under the plateau
Sutton County sits over the Canyon Sands gas play on the Val Verde Basin's northern shelf, a tight-sand formation that produced through the second half of the twentieth century and made the county a steady, unspectacular gas producer for decades. Wells here are numerous and modest rather than dramatic, and the compressor stations and gathering lines threading the ranches are the visible part of the business.
Above ground the land runs sheep, goats and cattle, as it has since the county organized in 1890. It is named for John S. Sutton, who fought in the Texas Revolution and the Mexican–American War and died of wounds after the Battle of Val Verde in 1862. Like Schleicher County, Sutton was carved out of the enormous original Crockett County in 1887.