With only three people on record as living in Mentone somehow 83 votes were cast to organize the county in 1893. But within a few years, the county officials had fled the area. The county was dissolved in 1897 and not reorganized until 1931.

Sheriff Hopper's forebears settled in Loving County in 1906. He was born in Odessa and arrived in Mentone as a 1-year old in 1938. The town was booming then, he said, with 300 people and four restaurants, three gas stations, a hotel and a bowling alley. But residents started moving away during World War II.

Mr. Hopper, a former Air Force nuclear weapons technician, became the deputy sheriff in 1999 and ran for sheriff in 2004 against a former sheriff's son. The race went down to the wire, ending in a tie, 41 to 41; Mr. Hopper won the runoff, 51 to 38.

Curiously, both vote totals exceeded the entire population of Loving County, put at 67 by the census in 2000. (In 2004, the Census Bureau estimated the population at 52, while Sheriff Hopper, after a house-to-house count, puts it now at 71).

Easily explainable, the sheriff said. Election time brings family members flocking in from afar or sending in absentee ballots. They may not live here year-round, he said, but as long as they "intend" to make it their home they may keep Loving County as their voting address to swing elections to relatives or friends and defeat tax-raising bond-issues.

But others had caught on to the system, too.

The newly elected sheriff had barely pinned on his star in January 2005, he recalled, when his phone rang with an old-fashioned warning: "You don't know it, but you're in trouble." A group was planning a takeover of the county, said the caller, a woman in Arizona who promised to send him some information by e-mail. The material described the plans of a Libertarian faction in its own words "to win most of the elected offices in the county administration" and "restore to freedom" Loving County. The blueprint, called "Restoring Loving County," said that land was hard to come by but that a ranch had been split up and members were in the process of buying sections.

"The people who are living there will be able to register to vote," it said. "They must swear that they intend to make Loving their home."