🌊 Inside Texas’ Man Camps

We visited man camps in the heart of oil country and the country’s most remote county to learn about life inside America’s oil machine

Odessa, TX

It was 55º when we walked outside of our Airbnb on the outskirts of this city on a foggy morning in late March.

Then we remembered a piece of advice we got about West Texas: Don’t let the morning cool deceive you. It will get hot.

I pulled out my phone and checked the weather for the day. The high in our final destination was 104º. We went back inside and grabbed a few extra water bottles.

Odessa – population 120,000 – may seem like a flyover city, but it matters: It’s the inspiration for the book and TV show Friday Night Lights, and the center of immense oil wealth. Despite that, Odessa looks frozen in time, with architecture that screams 1960s and the attire, 1980s.

Staring at the tallest building in the city, I couldn’t make out what the model tower was atop it. Was it a telecoms tower?

No – it was an oil rig, perched atop the highrise. Because make no mistake: This is oil country.

We got on the road heading west toward Loving County, the least populated county in America.

It officially has just 65 residents, though that number is misleading. “Man camps,” housing thousands of temporary oil workers, are scattered throughout the county. We wanted to meet them and better understand this remote but essential part of the country.

As we drove from Odessa, all signs of life started to vanish.