Mentone

Today's Mentone is an oil town. Prospectors James J. Wheat Sr. and Bladen Ramsey laid it out in 1925 after finding oil nearby and called it Ramsey until the postal service rejected the name. It stayed unsettled until 1931, when a post office was authorized and the reorganized county made it the seat. By July 1931 it had five cafes, five gasoline stations, two hotels and a dance hall, and the weekly Mentone Monitor ran from 1932 to 1935. The town counted 600 people in 1933; from 1972 until 1984 no business was open there.

What the plaque says

Mentone Smallest County Seat in Texas Mentone Only town in Loving County -- last organized, most sparsely populated (both in total and per square mile) county in Texas. Established 1931 and named for an earlier town (10 miles north) which legend says was named by a French surveyor-prospector after his home on the Riviera. With population of 42, Mentone has no water system. (Water is hauled in.) Nor does it have a bank, doctor, hospital, newspaper, lawyer, civic club or cemetery. There are only two recorded graves in county. Some Indian skeletons, artifacts are found. Oil, farming, cattle country. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roy Orbison Museum — 26 mi
  A volunteer-run room in the oil town where Roy Orbison spent his high school years, opened on request, with a guitar he played and his tinted prescription sunglasses.

More markers nearby

• Loving County — steps away
• Oliver Loving, C.S.A. — steps away
• Route of Old Butterfield Stagecoach Road — 0.4 mi
• Goodnight-Loving Trail — 0.5 mi