Lot 25

Some tracts sell on one showpiece. Tract 25 isn't one of them. What you get in these 70.8 acres of ranch land for sale on Alamo Ranch in Edwards County is plain, useful acreage: pale limestone shelf studded with live oak and cedar, five separate drainages threading it, and 117 feet of rise from the lowest point to the highest. It asks something of an owner. Push a pad, cut a spur off the existing lane, set a cabin under the shade you like best, and it will pay you back in elbow room and quiet for as long as you keep it.

The longest drainage is the spine of the property. It cuts roughly 2,330 feet, gathering most of what falls here before the water leaves the tract. A second channel, some 820 feet of it, folds through the middle. Another 650 feet drains the eastern part, a 570-foot draw cuts the northern end, and a short 430-foot channel gathers at the northeast corner. Dry most of the year, every one of them. Then a storm stacks up over the plateau in May and you'll hear rock turning in the bottom before first sun. Those draws hold the deepest soil, the tallest oaks, and the routes game uses at dusk when it doesn't want to be seen.

Roughly half the acreage carries trees. Live oak mottes, dark and rounded, sit in clumps with cedar filling between them, and the openings show white rock under a thin skin of soil and cured grass. At midday in July the stone throws heat back at you and everything alive is standing in shade. Evenings are a different animal. That 117 feet of climb, 2,055 to 2,172 feet, matters more than the number suggests when you go to choose a homesite, because a pad on the upper end sheds water and catches whatever breeze the plateau is willing to send.

A graded caliche lane bends through the eastern part, pale against the cedar and packed firm enough for a pickup after weather. It is the sort of ranch road a dozer can extend in a day, pushing a spur to whichever motte you decide to build under. How access reads on paper is a matter for the deed and the recorded plat, and we put those documents in your hands well before you sign anything.

Alamo Ranch spreads over 4,683 acres of this plateau, reached off Highway 55 and County Road 310 in the western reaches of the Texas Hill Country. Turkey and dove use these openings, elk and hogs travel through, and the ranch as a whole holds the mixed game this stretch of the plateau is known for. Power reaches points on the ranch, including up by the county road. We can take you to the closest line and you can price out for yourself what it would take to reach a building spot on this tract.

Boundaries are surveyed. The rules that ride with ownership are short and sensible, and nobody is running paid guided outings over the fence, which is the reason the game here settles in and stays. Owner financing is available on this tract and can start at 5%, which is how most of this acreage changes hands.

Wear boots you don't mind scarring on rock, and pants that shrug off cedar. Fall is the easy season, though I'd rather show it to you two days after a good rain, when the draws still hold puddles and there's green in the cured grass. We'll start at the head of the long drainage and follow it to the northeast corner, and you'll understand how this tract sits before we're halfway through it.