A Developer Snapped Up a 5,000-acre Ranch Near San Antonio

A Houston commercial real estate developer purchased a 5,000-acre historic Texas ranch last month.

An LLC registered to Mark Seger, a partner with Houston-based Wellington Development Company, bought a 5,000-acre ranch on the Leona River near Pearsall, about 70 miles south of San Antonio, according to public records. The seller is a ranch company owned by the late Eugene Kincaid III, an accomplished amateur historian and heir of a historic ranching family.

The final sale price is unavailable, but seller’s agent Robert Dullnig with Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty had listed the property for $16.5 million. Seger’s company, BC Frio 5000, secured a $13.5 million loan from Security State Bank and Trust for the purchase.

Aside from some irrigation wells and a 1,000-square-foot cabin, the land remains mostly unimproved, differing little from the “One League and one Labor” of land that the Republic of Texas granted to Maria Francisca Sosa in 1838, according to the General Land Office.

Dullnig billed the raw land as a development opportunity, ready for “improvements of your choice,” the listing states. The property includes several buildable homesites, according to Dullnig.

The sellers have leased the property as a hunting destination for years. The perimeter of the land includes over seven miles of high fence, and five irrigation wells supply water to troughs and tanks, supplementing the Leona River.

The land has just over two miles of waterfront on the Leona. It’s also veined by seasonal creeks that add over seven miles of waterfront during high-water periods.

Eugene Kincaid Jr. bought the land in 1948 for $121,000, according to public records. He was the grandson of William Davis Kincaid, who founded the Kincaid Ranch near Uvalde, just northeast of the Leona River ranch.

Eugene Kincaid III counted among his ancestors a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, which won the independence of the Republic of Texas. He collaborated with a professional historian in identifying a historic Spanish explorer campsite on the Kincaid Ranch.