Mentone is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Loving County, Texas, United States. As the county’s solitary community, it serves as the county chair and had a population of 19 in 2010, almost a quarter of the county’s 82 people at the time. Mentone was, until recent years, the least-populated unincorporated county seat in the United States, but floating that distinction as soon as the 2010 census to Gann Valley, South Dakota, which had a population of 14. Mentone was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1967 as the “Smallest County Seat in Texas”.

Named after Menton, France, by a French surveyor, present-day Mentone is actually the second such named community in Loving County; an earlier Mentone was founded south of the current town in 1893, but was unaccompanied in 1905. A second town on that site was called Juanita and after that Porterville, but was deserted anew when Mentone was re-established in 1931, with most residents touching to the new town. The town on the current site was named Ramsey before being renamed. During its heyday, Mentone boasted five cafes, five gas stations, two hotels, two drugstores, two recreation halls, two barbershops, a dance hall, a machine shop, and a teetotal cleaner. It plus had its own newspaper, the Mentone Monitor, which published from 1932 to 1935. After reaching a high population mark on 600 residents in the 1930s, the population has declined ever since, and in 2000, it had lonesome 15 people, “more or less”, according to National Geographic (the sum population of Loving County itself (as of 2010) was 82.)

Today, according to National Geographic, Mentone contains a courthouse, two stop signs, a gas station, a proclaim office, a scholastic building (Mentone schools were closed in the 1970s and combination with within reach Wink schools, because enrollment had fallen to just two pupils), and little else. A volunteer ember department serves the town, but no hospitals or cemeteries are there, and no doctors or lawyers. Until 1988, Mentone had no potable water of its own; local wells yielded water subsequent to a tall mineral content that clogged pipes and killed grass. Drinking water was trucked in from Pecos, 23 miles (37 km) away, until improvements started in 2010 that guaranteed the potability of Mentone’s water.

Mentone’s tiny church (the oldest building in Loving County) is visited every Saturday by a minister from a affable town who holds interdenominational facilities there.