Lot 164

Start at the northeast corner of Tract 164 and trace the eastern boundary. Wire follows it end to end, posts set in pale caliche, mesquite pressing close from both hands. Then swing west. The fence stays with you nearly half of the southern boundary before it plays out, and past that the perimeter reads in the thicket itself, a green wall of mesquite and huisache that reaches shoulder high after a wet spring and thins to gray sticks in a dry one. Call it 10.97 acres of ranch land for sale on Tortuga Ranch in Duval County, Texas. The recorded survey governs your corners, and wire is only wire.

Inside those edges the country lies nearly flat. Seven feet of fall is all there is from one end to the other, and you won't feel it under a truck or under your own two feet. Level like that is worth something out here: a cabin pad sits where you decide to put it, a cleared opening doesn't wash out on you after a hard South Texas rain, and you can push a two-track anywhere you please with a blade and half a day. Caliche shows white wherever tires have cut the top. Between the mesquite crowns there's prickly pear, low grass, and the silver-leafed scrub that whitens with bloom in the warm months.

The thicket is the real feature here, and it's worth understanding before you judge it. Country this thick is what feeds and hides game in the chaparral belt, and it's why the Freer and San Diego stretch of South Texas has the reputation it does for quail and whitetail. Deer slip between the mottes at first light and again at the end of the day. Quail favor the ragged edges where the scrub meets bare caliche. Clear a lane or two, leave the rest heavy, and you've got both a place to see and a place for the game to live.

There's history under all that green. Vaqueros were tending stock on Spanish land grants in this county by 1815, two decades ahead of Texas being Texas, and by the 1880s these pastures reportedly carried more sheep than any county in America, near 197,000 head counted in the 1880 census alone. Land grazed that hard for that many generations grows thicket as readily as it grows grass. That's the honest history of the mesquite you're looking at.

What you get on paper is simple. The tract has been surveyed, your way in on the ranch roads is written into the deed, and restrictions here are light enough to leave you room to build, hunt, or graze as you see fit. Owner financing starts at 5%, carried by us rather than a bank. Ask us how the tracts here are valued for ag or wildlife use and what it takes to keep that valuation in place, and confirm anything you need on utilities and septic before you plan a build.

• 10.97 acres, nearly level, 7 ft of fall corner to corner
• Fence on the full eastern boundary and close to half the southern
• Heavy mesquite and huisache with caliche footing
• Surveyed boundaries, ranch road entry written into the deed
• Owner financing starting at 5%

Visit after a good rain and you'll see this place at its greenest, or wait for late fall when the leaves thin and you can see forty yards into the thicket instead of ten. We'll meet you at the ranch road, drive the east fence with you, stop where the wire quits partway across the southern boundary, and turn you loose across the middle. Bring water and a long-sleeved shirt. The mesquite has thorns and it does not apologize for them.