Lot 133

Plain ground. That's the first honest thing to say about Tract 133, and it's the reason certain buyers stop here and keep going past the fancier stuff. This is 14.58 acres of ranch land for sale at Soledad Creek Ranch in Duval County, flat South Texas brush that has never pretended to be anything but what it is. It won't hand you a canyon rim or a bluff to build on. What it hands you is workable acreage, thick cover, and room to put your own mark on a place without fighting the terrain for permission.

The fall across the whole tract runs about 10 ft, which in practical terms means the ground is level enough to set a camp where you want it rather than where a slope allows. Park a trailer. Pull a pad. Run a two-track wherever the brush lets you through. Underfoot it's caliche and sand with cured grass in the open spots, and standing over most of it is mesquite and huisache grown up close, with prickly pear shouldering in where the light gets down. In summer the brush comes back green and dense enough that you'll lose sight of a man 40 yards off.

That cover is the asset here, and how you handle it decides what the place becomes. Cut a few senderos through the thick of it and leave the rest standing, and you've got shooting lanes with screening brush on either side. South Texas brush country carries a long reputation for quail, dove and whitetail, and this stretch of Duval County sits square in the middle of that country. Small-acreage tracts like this one are camp ground, elbow room for a stand, a fire ring and slow mornings. Nobody's running a big cattle operation on 14 acres and this land isn't sold as though they would.

Two pipeline easements cross the tract toward the west part, common through this country, shown on the survey and set out in the title work. Beyond the boundary, this is honest working oilfield country: pump jacks turning, tank batteries painted up green, poles and lines following the caliche roads. That's Duval County, and it always has been. Up the road, Freer boomed so hard on oil in the 1930s that LIFE magazine called it the last of the tough frontier oil towns. A caliche two-track and a pipe gate sit at the way in off the road, and we'll show you on the plat exactly what the recorded access is before you sign anything.

• 14.58 surveyed acres in Duval County brush country
• Level ground, roughly 10 ft of fall across the tract
• Heavy mesquite and huisache cover with caliche openings
• Light restrictions, commercial operations kept out
• Owner financing with as little as 5% down

The terms are meant to be simple. Surveyed boundaries, light restrictions that keep commercial outfits off the ranch, and owner financing you can start with as little as 5% down. No hoops worth writing about. Buyers ought to confirm for themselves what utilities, well and septic would take out here, and we'll point you at the county and the co-op so you're asking the right people rather than taking our word for it.

Come look at it in late fall or winter, when the mesquite has thinned some and you can actually read the ground. Wear boots you don't mind scarring and long sleeves, because huisache and pear don't care about your Saturday clothes, and bring leather gloves if you plan to push into the thick stuff. We'll drive the caliche in, walk you to the corners, and lay the survey on the hood so you can see where those easements run before you decide.