Upton County Texas map
31.35° N · 102.04° W · County seat: Rankin · 1,241 sq mi
Upton County is 1,241 square miles of ranch country with two small towns at opposite ends of it: Rankin, the county seat, and McCamey, which is more than twice its size and grew out of an oil strike in 1925. Underneath most of the county lies the Spraberry Trend, one of the largest oil accumulations in the United States by remaining reserves.
Rankin sits in the middle of the county on US-67. McCamey is 20 miles southwest, where US-67 and US-385 cross near the Crane County line.
Where Upton County is
Upton County was created from the Tom Green District in 1887 and organized in 1910, named for the brothers John C. and William F. Upton, both Confederate officers. It lies on the western edge of the Edwards Plateau where the land tilts down toward the Pecos, in the southern part of the Permian Basin.
Clockwise from north the neighbors are Midland, Glasscock to the northeast, Reagan east, Crockett south, Crane west and Ector northwest. Odessa is 39 miles northwest and Midland 44 miles north, which puts most of the county within an hour's drive of Permian Basin jobs. San Angelo is 95 miles east and Alpine 118 miles southwest.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| McCamey | City | 1,839 |
| Rankin (county seat) | City | 780 |
Upton is one of the counties where the seat is not the largest town. Rankin was platted as a stop on the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway and won the county seat when the county organized in 1910; McCamey appeared fifteen years later as a boomtown and passed it in population and never gave the lead back. Between them the two towns account for 2,619 of the county's 3,308 residents; the balance live on ranches and in oilfield camps.
Roads
- US-67 – the diagonal spine, running northeast from McCamey through Rankin toward Big Lake and San Angelo, southwest toward Fort Stockton.
- US-385 – north from McCamey to Odessa and I-20; south across the Pecos toward Fort Stockton and, eventually, Big Bend.
- SH-349 – north from Rankin straight to Midland, the county's fastest link to the airport and the interstate.
- SH-329 – west from Rankin to Crane, tying the county into the SH-329 corridor toward Monahans in Ward County.
McCamey: oil in 1925, wind since 2001
In 1925 a well drilled by George B. McCamey came in on the Baker ranch land near the Crane County line, and a tent town of several thousand people appeared beside the railroad within months. The town kept the driller's name. The nearby fields have produced continuously since, and the Mendoza Trail Museum in McCamey keeps the boomtown photographs and drilling gear.
The second boom arrived from a different direction. The mesas around McCamey — King Mountain in particular — catch strong, steady wind, and utility-scale wind farms went up there beginning in the late 1990s. In 2001 the Texas Legislature designated McCamey the Wind Energy Capital of Texas, and the turbine rows on the skyline south and east of town are now as much a landmark as the pumpjacks.
Ranches and the Spraberry
Away from the two towns, Upton County is ranchland: large cattle operations on shallow, rocky range that has supported little else since the 1880s. The county has no reservoir, no state park and, per the Census Gazetteer, essentially no surface water in its 1,241 square miles. Bobcat Hills is the named summit on the county's topographic maps.
What sits below is another matter. The Spraberry Trend, a tight sandstone and shale interval that stretches across Midland, Reagan, Glasscock and Upton counties, underlies much of the county and ranks among the largest oil fields in the country by remaining reserves. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing made it economic again after 2010, which is why oilfield traffic on SH-349 and US-385 is heavier than a county of 3,300 people would suggest.