Motley County: Below the Caprock, Thin Soil, Big Sky

The county covers 959 square miles of rolling plains. The land drops below the Caprock, the dramatic edge of the Llano Estacado plateau. Elevations range from about 1,900 to 3,000 feet. Annual rainfall averages around 20 inches — enough for grazing but not enough for most crops without irrigation.

The county was created in 1876 and organized in 1891, with Matador as the county seat. Comanche bands hunted here before the 1870s. Buffalo hunters arrived in the mid-1870s, followed quickly by cattle ranchers. Oil was discovered in 1957, adding a second economic layer to the ranching base. Population peaked in 1930 and has declined steadily since — by 2014 the count had fallen to around 1,150, and remained near 1,200 by the end of the decade. It is one of the more sparsely populated counties in Texas.