Mitchell County, Texas

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

300 MW Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

Cipher Mining

Resi rate Δ (AEP Texas)

n/a

Home price Δ (3y)

n/a

Property tax Δ (3y)

+6.5%

Population (2024 ACS)

9,018

Median HH income (2024 ACS)

$60,550

Key takeaways

Mitchell County has 8,989 residents and Colorado City the seat has 3,991. The 300 MW Cipher / Fluidstack Barber Lake campus is roughly 33 kW of AI compute per Mitchell County resident.Source: Census ACS 2023 B01003 (Mitchell County, TX and Colorado City) + app/county/tx-mitchell.html
Median household income in Mitchell County is $56,033 and the median home value is $85,700, the lowest home value in the West Texas data-center belt. Only 13.9% of residents over 25 hold a bachelor's degree.Source: Census ACS 2023 B19013, B25077, B15003 (FIPS 48335)
Colorado City sits on Lake Colorado City and Lake J.B. Thomas, two of the larger surface-water reservoirs in the Permian fringe. Cipher's Barber Lake campus is named for the third reservoir, the one closest to the parcel.Source: data/sites/data_centers.csv (Barber Lake)
Property tax assessments rose 6.5% over three years on a $1,599 median bill. ERCOT's deregulated retail market means AEP Texas has no published residential rate delta, so the bill-side cost of 300 MW of new load is invisible in the standard data.Source: data/cache/property_tax_yoy.csv (FIPS 48335) + data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (no AEP Texas residential row)

38.7% of Mitchell County residents are Hispanic, the highest Hispanic share of any West Texas county in batch 4 outside the Hale-Plainview corridor. Colorado City sits on the eastern edge of the Permian's Latino agricultural-labor belt.Source: Census ACS 2023 B03003 (FIPS 48335)
Median gross rent in Mitchell County is $481, the lowest in batch 4 by a wide margin. The Cipher Barber Lake workforce can find a rental for less than $500 a month, but the rental stock is barely 700 units total.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25064, B25003 (FIPS 48335)
Only 80.0% of Mitchell households have broadband at home, the lowest connectivity rate in batch 4. About 1,800 residents are offline in the same county where a 300 MW AI campus is being announced.Source: Census ACS 2023 B28002 (FIPS 48335)
13.2% of Mitchell residents live in poverty and 4.7% are unemployed. Manufacturing employs only 4.6% of the labor force, with the state prison unit and oilfield service work absorbing most of the employed adults.Source: Census ACS 2023 B17001, B23025, C24050 (FIPS 48335)