While some of the fastest growing areas in the nation are just to the south, Dawson County saw a decrease in population from 2017 to 2018, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The 2018 population estimates, released by the Census Bureau this past Thursday, show Dawson County with a population of 12,619 as of July 2018. That figure is down by almost 150 people from the estimate of 12,766 people living here in July 2017. Except for a jump from 2013 to 2014 – roughly near the end of the previous oil boom in West Texas – Dawson County’s ...