RED BLUFF, TEXAS (Reeves County). Red Bluff is a community on an unpaved road and the southern bank of the Red Bluff Reservoir, near Red Bluff Dam in northwestern Reeves County. The town, like the nearby dam and reservoir, was named for the bluffs on the Pecos River seven miles north. In November 1934 construction began on Red Bluff Dam, and the small settlement developed nearby. A hotel was built on the edge of the proposed lake, and a store opened in 1935. By 1939 Red Bluff had a population of fifty, the store, and the hotel. By the end of the 1940s its population had declined to twenty and the hotel had closed. The population remained at twenty during the 1950s, but by the mid-1960s it was reported as twelve, and by the late 1960s, as fifty-one. At times the community was without a store. By 1974 its population was estimated at forty, and it was still reported at that level in 1990. In the late 1980s a number of vacation houses were scattered around the lake, and a general store and bait shop operated beside the old vacant hotel, which stood in good condition. In 2000 the population was forty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Robert W. Dunn, The History of Loving County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1948; condensed in West Texas Historical Association Year Book, 1948).
