Lot 2

Walk the south side first. Roughly 460 ft of Ranch Road 1773 fronts Tract 2 there, weathered pavement at your shoulder and the whole southern boundary laid out in a straight run you can pace in a few minutes. Frontage and access aren't the same animal, and the deed and plat govern the second one, so we'll go over that with you sitting at the table. Two of the sides carry old wire on gray cedar and steel posts, put up years ago by somebody running cattle here (the recorded survey, not that wire, sets your corners). Turn north from the road and the pull is easy, roughly 39 ft between the low ground and the high, which means nothing on these 18.16 acres of ranch land for sale at Elm Springs asks much of a truck or a set of knees. This is Menard County, the northwestern shoulder of the Texas Hill Country, and the ground here shows it.

Inside the wire, cover is the story. Hardwood motts stand in dense clumps with cedar and hackberry filled in beneath, throwing cool ground deep enough that a camper, a picnic table, or a folding chair in July stays comfortable most of the day. Between the motts, clearings of straw-colored forage run in ribbons, cactus scattered through the low spots and small orange coneflowers and purple blooms coming on in the stems by early summer. Deer move through cover such as this at dusk. Mesquite thickens toward the lower end, and that's where you'd want to sit if you were watching something.

The other thing worth knowing is how simple this tract is to reach. A new electric entry gate serves the ranch, and yours is the first turn on the left once you're through it, so you aren't grinding a mile of interior two-track with a load of lumber or a cooler in the bed. A community well sits a couple of tracts north up the ranch road. Ask us how that's set up and what it does and doesn't cover, and we'll give you the straight answer rather than a promise the paperwork has to make.

The valley itself carries some age. Spain pushed its frontier to the San Saba River in 1757 and raised a mission and a stone presidio near the town of Menard, and while the mission burned inside a year and its site went lost until archaeologists found it in the 1990s, the presidio ruins sit on the riverbank where anybody can walk through. Then there's the silver. Jim Bowie rode out in 1831 hunting a lost mine, found a famous fight instead of ore, and the town throws Jim Bowie Days every June over a legend nobody has ever proved.

Elm Springs runs 1,694 acres, sold as surveyed tracts with restrictions kept light and aimed mainly at keeping commercial operations out of the valley. Owner financing is available with as little as 5% down. A tract this size gives you a real camping and hunting footprint without handing you a full ranch's fence and brush program every spring.

• Roughly 460 ft fronting Ranch Road 1773 on the south side
• First turn on the left inside the ranch's electric entry gate
• Fenced on two sides, with the recorded survey governing corners
• Gentle terrain, roughly 39 ft between low ground and high
• Owner financing with as little as 5% down

Wear boots and long pants, because the cactus doesn't care what your jeans cost. Late October is a fine time to see it, once the heat breaks and the hardwoods hold their color, though the cover reads honest in any month you show up. Call us and we'll meet you at the entry gate, pace both fenced sides, show you exactly where the road frontage corner sits, and let you stand in the deepest mott on the property while you think it over.