It is the setting for Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country for Old Men, and the Academy Award-winning film adaptation of the same name.

Pieces of reed sandals, baskets, and evidence of burials have been found in the caves.

The most pictographs are on cliff walls above Myers Spring near Dryden, overpainting giving to the theory that several Indian cultures were involved.

[5] Captain Samuel Highsmith, under the command of John Coffee Hays, crossed the county in 1848 in an ill-fated expedition to open a road from San Antonio to El Paso.

[6] In 1851 Army officer and geographer Lt. Nathaniel Michler, working under Major William H. Emory, mapped this portion of the boundary between Mexico and the United States.

[7] Under Lt. William Echols in 1859, caravans of the U.S. Camel Corps crossed the county searching for a shorter route to Fort Davis.

In 1881, Texas and New Orleans Railroad surveyors reached the site of present-day Sanderson.

Only gas was produced until the 1970s, when high petroleum prices encouraged limited oil production, as well.

1, 76th Legislature, Regular Session (1999) declared Sanderson and Terrell County the "Cactus Capital of Texas.

"[14] According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 2,358 square miles (6,110 km2), virtually all of which is land.

The remaining 11.7% of the county experiences a hot arid desert climate (Köppen BWh).