Lot 89

Edwards County is plateau ranch land: pale rock, cedar breaks, wide valleys, and outfits measured in sections rather than acres. Highway 55 carries you into it, then County Road 310 takes over and the pavement quits. That is where Tract 89 sits, 44.21 acres of ranch land for sale on Alamo Ranch, a 4,683-acre spread of rolling rises and dry creek bottoms that elk, turkey and dove all travel through. Quiet out here isn't a sales line. It's just Tuesday.

Narrow it to this tract and the first thing worth knowing is the draw. It enters at the northwest corner and cuts better than 1,300 ft into the middle of the property, a seasonal creek line that carries water after a hard rain and dries back between them. You can read it from a distance by the timber. The trees stand taller and darker where the soil is deeper, and that dark ribbon is the natural travel lane through the tract, which is why anyone who wants a spot to sit at daybreak ought to start there. Follow it on foot in boots. It'll tell you plenty in twenty minutes.

The land lifts roughly 160 ft over the tract, from around 2,025 ft at the low end to 2,185 ft at the top. It steps, it doesn't slope. Benches and rocky shelves rise between the bottom and the high rock, and the limestone shows white and bare in patches where the cedar thins out. There's shelf and shoulder up top wide enough to think seriously about a cabin, but what you'll see from up there depends on how the neighboring terrain stacks up, so stand on the high spots yourself before you settle on a building spot and let us know what you're planning so we can point you at the right questions.

Cedar carries most of the acreage, heavy in the folds and thinner on the rock, with live oak scattered through in motts and singles. It is rough, honest cedar range. In July the tan grass shows between the trees and the caliche glares back at you at midday, and by evening the same rock holds heat while the shade under the oaks turns cool. A chainsaw and a few weekends will open pockets where you want them and leave the rest thick for screening and bedding, and you can do that a piece at a time as your budget allows.

A caliche ranch road bends past the east end of the tract and forks there, with two-track spurs peeling off into the timber. Level pads cut into the caliche sit next to those forks, already stripped to rock. Getting a truck in isn't a project. How your access reads on paper is set by the deed and the plat rather than by tire tracks, and we'll go over yours line by line before you sign a thing.

Every tract on this ranch is surveyed with its own boundary, and the rule set the ranch carries is a short one, written to protect the character of the property without getting in your way; we'll hand you a copy to read at the kitchen table. Owner financing is offered on every property here, and 5% up front can start it. The terms print out next to this listing. Ask us how the ag valuation is handled, and ask where power sits before you settle on a spot.

October is the month to see it, when the heat quits and the cedar smells like cedar again. Wear stiff-soled boots, because loose limestone chews soft ones up. We'll put you in at the northwest corner where the draw enters, take you the length of it to the middle of the tract, then climb to the 2,185 ft end so you can feel what that rise really does. Bring water. Half a day out here is a fair look at 44.21 acres.