Sierra Blanca, County Seat at the Edge of Nothing

Sierra Blanca is the county seat of Hudspeth County, one of the least-populated counties in the contiguous United States. The town sits at about forty-five hundred feet in a wide valley between the Sierra Blanca and the Eagle Mountains, with the white-capped peak the town is named for visible to the northwest. The Southern Pacific came through in eighteen eighty-one, and Sierra Blanca became a division point where trains changed crews.

Hudspeth County covers more than forty-five hundred square miles but holds fewer than four thousand people, making it one of the emptiest counties east of the Rockies. The county courthouse here, built in nineteen nineteen, is the last adobe courthouse in Texas. The highway checkpoint operated by Border Patrol outside Sierra Blanca is one of the most frequently discussed enforcement points on I-Ten.