Legally Protected, 6,400-Acre Timberland Tract Trades Hands

A 6,400-acre ranch in East Texas recently sold under a conservation easement, marking an unusual sale in the Texas land business.

The Bobcat Ridge Ranch, east of Palestine on the Neches River, recently sold after asking $26.5 million, or about $4,100 per acre. The final sale price isn’t available.

The seller was an area forester named Forrest Hodges, who owns a family-run logging company headquartered nearby. The buyer is an LLC, also based locally. The owner intends to make the land a family compound, according to listing agent Tyler Jacobs, a real estate partner at Hall and Hall.

The land is in prime timber country, but it also doubles as a hunting destination, offering another potential income source. The seller imported native South Texas deer to improve the genetics of the local game, and most of the border is high-fenced, Jacobs said. A 5,200-square-foot lodge sleeps 23 people, and other improvements include dog kennels, additional guides’ quarters by the lodge and shooting ranges for rifle, pistol and shotgun, according to the listing. The land spreads along 13 miles of the Neches River.

Except for some of the acreage around the lodge, the land is under a perpetual conservation easement intended to preserve open space and native wildlife. The easement forbids owners from subdividing the land, a restriction that repels most buyers with a commercial interest but attracts those who prize conservation.

Conservation easements are more common in western states like New Mexico, but in Texas, “to my knowledge, that’s the largest sale of a conserved property in a very, very long time,” Jacobs said.

Another recently marketed family ranch, the 8,500-acre Nineteen Mile Ranch northwest of San Antonio, is under a conservation easement, but it was taken off the market in 2024. Last year, an environmental organization obtained a conservation easement for the 6,600-acre T.M. O’Connor Ranch in Goliad County, but the ranch remains under family ownership.

It’s also unusual for family-owned timberland sales to attain this acreage in East Texas, according to Jacobs.

“In East Texas, you generally have two timber operators: You have the family that’s owned 100 acres forever, and then all the other companies are owned mostly by institutions, like pension funds,” Jacobs said.Due to the abundance of water in East Texas, and its scarcity in West Texas, settlers and farmers also historically required larger tracts in the west.