Old Orla Grocery Sign (Orla, Texas)
I think that this grocery store was operational at least until the 1960s, because the Texas State historical marker located in front of this structure that makes mention of this market was placed here in 1965.
Orla is an amazingly dead little town that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, still has a functioning post office. It is located in the absolute middle of nowhere between Carlsbad, New Mexico and Pecos, Texas along United States Highway 285. It was an old oil boom town located in the northern tip of Reeves County near the Pecos River and Loving County (the least populous county in the nation).
I first visited this community, or rather passed through it, in 2001 when I was twelve, and my family and I were passing through this desolate part of Texas on our way back home from Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We were taking a long way back to Lubbock, and my father and I were amazed at how isolated we felt. This community as well as the nearby town of Mentone were some of the first places in my mind that inspired me to visit county courthouses. I know that Orla never had a courthouse, but Mentone did; and when we passed through this area years ago, it seemed as if we had seen the most extreme of locations for any county courthouse in the U. S. I asked myself, if I had seen this extreme of the spectrum, what do the courthouses in the rest of the country look like? Now here it is, almost a decade later, and I do not regret a second of my county travels.
Old Orla Grocery Sign (Orla, Texas)
I think that this grocery store was operational at least until the 1960s, because the Texas State historical marker located in front of this structure that makes mention of this market was placed here in 1965.
Orla is an amazingly dead little town that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, still has a functioning post office. It is located in the absolute middle of nowhere between Carlsbad, New Mexico and Pecos, Texas along United States Highway 285. It was an old oil boom town located in the northern tip of Reeves County near the Pecos River and Loving County (the least populous county in the nation).
I first visited this community, or rather passed through it, in 2001 when I was twelve, and my family and I were passing through this desolate part of Texas on our way back home from Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We were taking a long way back to Lubbock, and my father and I were amazed at how isolated we felt. This community as well as the nearby town of Mentone were some of the first places in my mind that inspired me to visit county courthouses. I know that Orla never had a courthouse, but Mentone did; and when we passed through this area years ago, it seemed as if we had seen the most extreme of locations for any county courthouse in the U. S. I asked myself, if I had seen this extreme of the spectrum, what do the courthouses in the rest of the country look like? Now here it is, almost a decade later, and I do not regret a second of my county travels.