SparksTX
A town of 4,134.
Is Sparks a good place to live?
Sparks earns a D, 555th of 640 graded towns in Texas, mostly because of incomes. The median household income is $35K, and 52% of residents live below the poverty line. What it does well: natural-hazard risk is low. 52% of residents live below the poverty line in Sparks, against 12% in Texas’ towns and 9.6% across U.S. towns. Most errands need a car: it is less walkable than 89% of U.S. towns. Among 642 Texas towns, just 9 have a lower share of adults with a bachelor’s degree than Sparks.
What makes Sparks stand out
Where Sparks beats most towns.
99% of working residents leave Sparks for work
Where Sparks’s working residents go each day. Line width shows the share.
Census LEHD 2023
How Sparks grades
Each subject compared with towns across the country (schools within Texas), ordered by how far Sparks is from typical.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Sun Bowl Stadium and 14 more within 40 miles
Museums, parks, gardens and other places to visit around Sparks. Close and well known come first.
17 mi Stadium & arenaSun Bowl Stadium
21 mi Ancient siteHueco Tanks
21 mi State parkFranklin Mountains State Park
14 mi National MemorialChamizal National Memorial8K visitors a year
16 mi TheatrePlaza Theatre
21 mi Theme parkWestern PlaylandPhoto credits
Sun Bowl Stadium: Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0 · Hueco Tanks: Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0 · Franklin Mountains State Park: Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0 · Chamizal National Memorial: Original uploader was Mosamiazaz at en.wikipedia, Public domain · Plaza Theatre: Donitza Marie, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Western Playland: Dimples915, CC BY-SA 3.0
Moving to Sparks: who provides what
Sparks is unincorporated, so El Paso County and regional agencies provide most services.
EPA SDWIS (Oct 9, 2026) · HIFLD + EIA-861 2025 · Census 2020 ZCTAs · NCES 2024–25 · registration: vote.gov, updated Nov 18, 2024.
The data
Ordered by what stands out in Sparks.
Sparks carries less natural-hazard risk than nearly all of Texas (mostly inland flooding), has more 90° days than nearly all U.S. towns and is healthier than towns with similar incomes.
Very low risk in Sparks, with inland flooding at the top
FEMA rates its natural-hazard risk lower than 90% of Texas towns, with expected losses of about $180 per resident a year; that rating is what its A for hazard risk is built on.
Sparks’ FEMA risk score is 14 of 100.
FEMA National Risk Index · OpenFEMA
Sparks’ typical home value is about $173K
Values rose 3.6% in the past year while the Texas typical home fell 1.5%. Home values rose 33% in five years, to about $173K, against 10% across Texas.
The typical Sparks home is worth about $173,000, 41% below the Texas typical home.
| Sparks | Texas towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Households that own their home | 66% | 69% | 73% |
| Median rent | $1,080 a month | $1,208 a month | $1,185 a month |
Typical home value
Zillow Home Value Index · Redfin Data Center
About two in three of Sparks’ working residents commute to El Paso
Sparks has 496 jobs for its 2,317 working residents: even if every job went to a resident, most would still commute out. The average commute takes 20.6 minutes, against 26.7 across Texas.
Most working residents leave Sparks for work: only 1% work in town. The average trip to work in Sparks is 21 minutes. The top destinations are El Paso (71%), Horizon City (3%) and Socorro (2%).
| Sparks | Texas towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average trip to work | 21 minutes | 25 minutes | 25 minutes |
| Working residents who work in town | 0.6% | 8.3% | 8% |
Where working residents work
Census LEHD 2023 · ACS
On CDC estimates, Sparks is less healthy than 74% of U.S. towns
Against the 1,230 U.S. towns with household incomes like Sparks’s, it is healthier than 88%, so its C isn’t only a matter of income.
Sparks beats the Texas average on 2 of 31 CDC measures and trails it on 11. 34% of Sparks adults 18 to 64 have no health insurance.
| Sparks | Texas towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No health insurance, 18–64 (CDC PLACES) | 34% | 18% | 8.1% |
| Fair or poor health (CDC PLACES) | 30% | 24% | 19% |
| Food insecurity (CDC PLACES) | 28% | 20% | 14% |
| Get no exercise (CDC PLACES) | 36% | 30% | 25% |
| What stands out | Sparks | TX |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer adults who have had cancer | 3.9% | 6.1% |
| Fewer adults with arthritis | 19.1% | 21.6% |
| More uninsured adults | 33.5% | 19.1% |
CDC PLACES 2025 · modeled estimates for adults · CMS · HRSA
In Sparks, expect mild winters and hot summers
The El Paso Intl Ap weather station, 12 miles away, records that about 117 days a year reach 90°, more than in 98% of U.S. towns. July afternoons average 96°, hotter than in 97% of U.S. towns; January nights average 31.5°.
Sparks has mild winters and hot summers, with very little rain. About 3 inches of snow falls in a winter.
| Sparks | Texas towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| July high | 96°F | 95°F | 85°F |
| January low | 32°F | 37°F | 22°F |
Typical low → high °F
NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, 1991–2020
0.2% of Sparks is conserved land
Just 2 of its 893 acres are conserved, so there is little public open land in Sparks itself; its outdoors grade is D.
0.0 miles of trail in 1 park or preserve.
| Biggest places to walk | Trails | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Sparks Park | — | 3 |
Trails & parks © OpenStreetMap contributors · Conserved land: USGS PAD-US
Everything we know about Sparks
Colleges nearby
4 within 15 miles of the center of Sparks
About 13 of every 100 Sparks residents are enrolled in college, against 6 across Texas.
About Sparks
Census-designated place in Texas, United States
Sparks is a census-designated place (CDP) in El Paso County, Texas, United States. As of the 2020 census, Sparks had a population of 4,760. It is part of the El Paso Metropolitan Statistical Area.
From Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · facts via Wikidata (CC0)
- Area
- 1.4 sq mi
- Elevation
- 3,812 ft
Questions about Sparks
Short answers, built from the data on this page.
Is Sparks, TX a good place to live?
Sparks grades D overall, better than 6% of U.S. towns and #555 of 640 in Texas. It grades C for health and C+ for schools. Walkability is its weak spot, with a D.
Is Sparks, TX expensive?
That is 2.9 years of the area's median household income ($59,751 across the El Paso, TX metro area). Cost of living, which also weighs rents, property taxes and how many households pay 30% or more of their income for housing, grades C+.