Lot 28

Plain is the fair word for this one, and plain is the point. Tract 28 at Darden Canyon is 58.46 acres of red soil, brush and scrub, and it asks very few things of the person who buys it. Boots. A good tire. Some patience in July. Folks hunting honest ranch land for sale in Motley County, Texas are usually tired of being sold a picture, and this tract has no picture to sell you, just shape, hard quiet, and a ranch road already laid in.

Start where that road forks on the northwest side. Two round steel tanks sit in a worn opening of red soil there, and on an April afternoon the cattle string in to them from all sides, calves and all. You can read the whole property from that opening. Pale trails thread away like spokes, and they show you where animals move when nobody is around. Game waters where cattle water, which is why a hunter who thinks hard about those trails before he picks a spot is ahead of the man who picks a spot first. Ask us what stays with the land and what belongs to the cattle operation, because those two things are not the same.

The land lifts and settles some 69 feet, from near 2,372 feet at the low side to 2,441 at the top, and that movement is the character of the tract. Here is where the High Plains start to crack apart. Nothing dramatic yet. Shallow draws just beginning their lives, brush darker in the folds where the moisture holds a day longer, and a horizon to the south that goes flat and blue for as far as you care to look. Stand up on the high end late in the day and the far rim turns rust colored.

That red soil is the quiet advantage out here. A blade opens it easily, it is kind to a shovel, and a two-track holds its shape after a rain instead of turning to glue. Brush and scrub carry the entire tract, so you have screening in every direction and a project you can take at your own pace: open a lane where you want one, leave the thick stuff standing where the animals bed. Nothing has to be done on day one.

• Interior ranch road access, with the fork and the water on the northwest side
• 69 ft of elevation movement, 2,372 to 2,441 ft
• Surveyed boundaries and deeded access, light restrictions

This is the old Matador range. A Scottish syndicate out of Dundee bought the Matador in 1882 and built it to 861,000 acres under the plains rim, headquartered at Ballard Springs some fifteen miles from here, and that outfit is still handling cattle today. Hide men out of Dodge City raised Tee Pee City in 1875 in this same part of the county, a trading post so rowdy the Matador put it off limits to its own cowboys. Wild then. Lonesome now, in the best way the word can be used, with mesas standing off in the distance and very few lights at night.

Ownership is kept simple on purpose. The tract is surveyed before you buy, with deeded access and light restrictions, and the ranch carries an agricultural valuation that we can walk you through so you understand what it takes to keep it in effect on your own acreage. Owner financing is available with as little as 5% down, and the full terms print right beside this listing so you can see them for yourself.

Walk it in spring while the brush is leafing and the calves are out. Wear something a thorn will not tear and bring water. We will park at the fork, look at the tanks and the trails leading away from them, then follow the land uphill east to the high end and watch the draws start to take shape under your feet. Call us about Tract 28 and we will meet you at the gate.