Lot 32

July gets loud out here. Cicadas going in the oaks by two in the afternoon, caliche throwing heat back at your boots, thunderheads stacking over the plateau while the shade under a wide live oak stays a good ten degrees kinder than anything in the open. That's the hour to stand on Tract 32, 43.63 acres of ranch land for sale on Alamo Ranch in Edwards County, Texas. Wait until six. The sun goes long and yellow, the heat lets off, and everything with legs starts stirring in the timber.

The eastern flank is the heart of this tract. A seasonal creek bed traces it end to end, roughly 1,220 ft of drainage entering at the north end and falling through the length of the property, and an existing dirt ranch road of nearly the same length, around 1,190 ft, keeps it company the whole way. At the northeast corner the trail drops into the bed and crosses at a ford. That crossing matters more than it sounds: it's a ready-made route into the heaviest timber on the tract without cutting a single new track, and drainages like this one are the highways game uses at dusk. The creek is seasonal, the way every creek in this part of the plateau is. It carries after a good rain and it lies dry in a hard spell, and we'll take you into the bed so you can read the rock and the drift for yourself.

Better than four fifths of the tract is wooded, heaviest of all through the northeast corner where the oak and cedar close in and the shade holds most of the day. In between are the pale openings you can see from the trail, thin grass over limestone, prickly pear, mottes of live oak standing separate like somebody planted them. The terrain lifts roughly 77 ft over the tract, from around 2,098 ft at the low end to about 2,175 ft at the high end, enough tilt to shed water and enough relief to change what you're looking at every few hundred yards. Pick a bench under the oaks and you've got screening on every hand. Clear a small opening and you've got sun for a cabin, a set of pens, or a spot to park a trailer while you decide.

Alamo Ranch covers 4,683 acres of Edwards Plateau ranching landscape, rolling rises, wide valleys, and dry creek bottoms, reached off Highway 55 and County Road 310 with the historic town not far up the road. Elk, turkey, dove and hogs all travel this ranch, and the timber and drainage on this tract are exactly the kind of shelter and travel lane they favor. It is quiet out here in a way that surprises people the first evening. Wind in the cedar, a hawk working the openings, and not much else.

On the ownership side, this is a surveyed tract with its own recorded boundaries and simple, short covenants that keep the neighbors reasonable without telling you how to enjoy your own property. There's no outfitting business operating on the ranch. Fence stands on the east; the recorded survey and title work govern where the true lines fall, and we'll go over the plat with you before you sign anything. Power lines follow the county road and reach various points through the ranch, and we'll show you the nearest one to this tract so you can price the run yourself. Owner financing is offered with as little as 5% down, which is how most buyers out here get started.

Wear boots with a stiff sole, because the limestone is unforgiving and the pear will find you. Late October is the pleasant time to see it, when the heat finally breaks and the oaks still hold their leaves. Call us and we'll meet you at the county road, take the dirt trail the length of the east boundary, stop at the ford, and let you find the spot on this tract you keep thinking about on the drive home.