Bandera, the Cowboy Capital of the World and home of the famous Arckey Blues Silver Dollar Saloon, has had a recent surge in growth and tourism and has many new shops, restaurants, live music venues, galleries, and amenities. Bandera is just 45 minutes to San Antoino and its international airport, riverwalk, medical center, and cultural features.

Acreage

1,411 acres near Bandera Texas

Description

Cinco Verde is the combination of the 378-ac Davenport Ranch and the 1,033-ac Nicholson Ranch, both heritage hill country ownerships that have recently undergone a huge investment in roads, clearing, low water crossings, and ranch clean up. Davenport serves as the Headquarters today with a custom home of native limestone and metal construction with wide porches set on a perch above the spring fed West Verde Creek. This improvement area with various outbuildings serves as the operational headquarters. The Nicholson next door has a huge heritage live oak forest where there at one time was a settlers headquarters on the sycamore tree lines banks of the Creek. This is the perfect place for a large new owners compound where you are private, great views, close to live water, electricity, well, and central to the ranch.

The ranch is a combination of beautiful, lush meadows, rugged mountains, large oak and juniper woodlands, limestone outcrops, and both sides of a live water creek that runs through the ranch for 2.25 miles. There are two new large low water crossings that create stocked lakes with bluffs, trees, and limestone ledges. On Davenport there is a clear spring that pours out of the limestone rock into the creek. Several other springs feed the West Verde Creek as well. Even in the harshest part of the recent drought there were large segments of the creek and several springs that flowed water year-round.

Davenport Cave is located on the banks of the creek and has been mapped to 480 feet with many chambers, squeezes and rooms. The cave has been visited by many researchers and scientists who have mapped and inventoried the cave over the past 50 years. There are additional unmapped caves that are on Cinco Verde ready for the new owners to explore.

Improvements

The Davenport Headquarters has been cleaned up extensively and today consists of a 1,920-sq-ft-rock and metal constructed home with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and modern kitchen, living, dining and office. The entire west and east sides have large, covered porches. A 1,800 sq ft metal shop with concrete floors, electricity, work benches/tables are ready for any hobby or ranch construction project. At one time in the history of Davenport some of the open meadows were cut for hay and there is a historic hay barn and shed for equipment. There is also steel pipe working pens with loading shoot. A short drive away is a separate 2,432 sq ft doublewide hunting lodge with 3br/2ba with separate well in excellent condition. The floor plan has an open living, dining, and kitchen with a full length front covered porch.

Nicholson has the historic headquarters area on the banks of West Verde which today is immaculate, cleaned up, and ready for the new owners designed dream home. Excellent roads lead into and out of this location where you can easily access the creek, the lakes, the mountain and large cleared fields and meadows. There is an electric well at this location and a hand dug well that naturally flows to the creek in wet times, probably an old spring. There are two other new electric service poles and meters pulled to the two dams for potential future improvements.

The road system is second to none with access now throughout the ranch from the mountains to the lowlands. Brush has been pushed, piled, burned, and bare soil reseeded and new road material made by an Iron Wolf milling machine creating a sharp well maintained perfect hill country ranch.

Wildlife and Habitat

This is Hill Country at its finest set in a large landscape of protected low-fence properties and the 5,400-ac State Natural Area next door. The Hill Country SNA has miles of trails used by hikers and campers, but also by equestrian users as one of its biggest user groups. The habitat and vegetation are Hill Country at its finest with trees dominated by live oak, ashe juniper, red oak, lacey oak, pecan, sycamore, and sugar hackberry. Shrubs and cacti include mountain laurel, mexican buckeye, prickly pear cactus, yucca, and agarita. Grass include sideoats grama, green sprangeltop, and little bluestem. In spring, wildflower meadows fill with Indian paintbrush, bluebonnets, firewheels, and gold daleas.

With the lake development and re-opening of the grass meadows from invasive junipers the wildlife has flourished. Whitetail deer, turkey and aoudad are found on the ranch in abundance. The ranch with its amazing water features also has populations of ducks and waterfowl in the winter. The combination of water resources and upland Hill Country habitat and game create a sportsmans paradise. Songbirds, hummingbirds, shorebirds, monarch butterflies, hawks, and ringtail cats capture the amazing wildlife diversity on the ranch.