The other Texas the boom forgot: Rural counties struggle to stay afloat

CROWELL — The big black-and-white photos on the walls of the tightly packed Fire Hall Museum show off Crowell and Foard County back in the 1950s and ’60s when sharp-finned cars filled the angled parking spaces around the county square and crowds jammed the local movie house.

But even then Foard and dozens of other rural Texas counties were slipping — their populations dropping by 10, 20, even 30 percent in each census, a trend that never really changed.

Each year, when the U.S. Census Bureau releases the latest population estimates, attention turns to the surging growth along the Texas Triangle — shaped by the three interstate highways connecting the state’s biggest cities.

But there’s barely a mention of this other Texas, more than 100 counties in the east and the Panhandle, scattered across the Plains and the emptiness of the west. And this is the iconic Texas people imagine when they hear the name, where horses and cowboys are part of the landscape and the open expanses stretch off to the horizon.

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