Lot 73

The ground on this one lies easy. It swells and settles across about 58 ft of rise, from roughly 2,207 ft in the low ground up to about 2,265 ft, and none of it comes at you steep. What that gives you on 48.17 acres of ranch land for sale on the Lone Star Ranch in Edwards County is a place you can drive nearly all of in a side-by-side without picking your line, and a high shoulder toward the upper end where a cabin or a camp could sit and catch the evening air. Walk it and you'll see the pattern. Long, shallow benches of caliche and limestone rubble, then a swale of grass, then another bench, the whole thing tilting off toward the lower draws.

This is oak savanna country, not a thicket. Live oaks stand out singly and in motts across the open ground, dark and low-crowned and old enough to throw real shade by mid-morning, with cedar and shin oak filling in between them. The ground between the trees runs pale, white rock and gravel with grass coming through it in patches, so you can glass a long way and watch something move at 300 yards. That kind of cover is worth something to a hunter. Whitetail work this ranch alongside axis, aoudad, elk, turkey and dove, and hogs use it too, and on ground this open you get to see them before they see you.

Old ranch two-tracks already run through the place, faint pale lines curving between the oaks, and they save you the first year of work. You won't have to cut in a road system from nothing. To the northwest the country falls away toward a broad bottom, and off the west and north side of the tract a caliche ranch road runs the high line, which is how you come and go. There's fence along the north side, better than half of that boundary run, and it takes care of your first stretch of work up there. The recorded survey and the title work govern where your corners actually fall, and we'll walk them with you.

Rocksprings sits 13 miles north, up Highway 55 and County Road 310, which is close enough for fuel, feed and a cup of coffee and far enough that nobody wanders out here by accident. Edwards County is the top of the Hill Country, high and dry and lonesome, and this is stone-ranch country that's been run in cattle, sheep and goats for a hundred years. Late afternoons the light comes across low and turns the caliche gold. The quiet out here is the kind you notice in your ears.

Buying is straightforward. The tract is surveyed, the restrictions are light and there's no commercial hunting allowed on the ranch, so your neighbors are running their own places rather than a paying operation. Owner financing is available with as little as 5% down. Electricity runs near the county road and at various points across the Lone Star Ranch, and we'll show you where the nearest service sits relative to your corners so you can price the run yourself. Same for water: ask us what the wells in this part of the county have done, and we'll tell you straight what we know.

Come see it in the cool part of the year if you can, October or later, when the grass has color and you can cover the whole 48 acres on foot in a morning. Wear boots with a stiff sole, since the rock will find thin ones. We'll meet you at the gate, run you up to the high end first, and let you stand there a while before anybody talks about paperwork.

• 48.17 surveyed acres on the Lone Star Ranch, Edwards County
• About 58 ft of rise, roughly 2,207 to 2,265 ft
• Open live oak savanna with existing two-track ranch roads
• Fence along the north side
• Whitetail, axis, aoudad, elk, turkey and dove on the ranch
• Owner financing with as little as 5% down