Lot 39

Edwards County is limestone all the way through. The plateau up here wears a thin skin of soil over solid rock, and what grows on it (live oak, cedar, agarita, prickly pear) grows tough, holds its color through a dry August, and feeds game that has learned to live on scarce rain. Families have run sheep, goats and cattle over this same rock for generations, and the pavement of 55 still carries more stock trailers than sedans. Turn off it onto County Road 310 and the traffic quits. Tract 39 is 60.44 acres of ranch land for sale on Alamo Ranch, one of the well timbered pieces inside the ranch's 4,683 acres, and it is a wooded tract in the truest sense: there isn't a bare acre on it.

Every acre carries trees. That doesn't mean a solid wall of green, and standing out there in July you'll see why: live oak mottes sit low and broad with their limbs nearly touching the rock, cedar fills between them, and the openings that separate one motte from the next are pale caliche and bunchgrass with pear scattered through. So you have shade where you want it and daylight where you need it. A pad can be shaped in one of those natural openings without pushing over a single big oak, and the timber that stays standing screens a camp from anything on the rest of the tract.

The land tilts. From the lowest corner to the highest the rise is some 64 ft, roughly 2,179 up to 2,243 ft, which on this plateau is enough to change what you see over the tops of the oaks and enough to keep rainwater traveling instead of standing. The high end is the first spot I'd take a buyer looking for a cabin site. What shows from up there depends on what the neighboring rises do, and I won't tell you a thing about that until we're both standing on it and you've turned a full circle for yourself.

There's an existing dirt ranch road on the tract at the north end, roughly 120 ft of it, already bladed and packed. Practical value: a drive can tie into something that exists rather than starting from raw rock, and it saves dozer hours the first week you own the tract. What that road means legally is a separate question from what it means for a truck. The recorded deed and plat govern access, and we'll go through both of them with you line by line before anything gets signed.

Game travels the whole ranch, and this piece of it sits in the timber where animals prefer to spend the middle of the day. Elk, turkey, dove and hogs all use the ranch's wide valleys and dry creek bottoms, drifting up into shade like this when the sun gets high. In spring you'll hear turkey before you see them. September puts dove over the caliche openings, and the trails threading between the oak mottes here are the same trails that were there long before a surveyor ever set a pin.

Ownership is meant to be simple. This is a surveyed tract with a recorded boundary, the rules on the ranch are few and short, and paid guide outfits aren't part of how this ranch operates, so your neighbors are owners rather than clients. Power follows the county road and various points around the ranch, and we'll tell you exactly where the nearest run sits so you can confirm the service and the cost with the provider yourself. Owner financing is available, and 5% up front is enough to start one. We'd rather sell you land you've stood on than land you've only read about.

Bring boots with real soles, because the rock out here eats cheap ones, and a hat. October and November are the kindest months to cross it on foot, though July will show you honestly how much shade those oaks throw when you want it most. We'll meet you at the ranch entrance off County Road 310, start at the north end where the dirt road already sits, and climb from there.