In rainier days, Lewis McNeel would drop everything to drive out of town and leap into the cool, clear and spring-fed waters of a seasonal creek flowing freely along the limestone cliffs on his family’s land.
It’s an experience he said “that can’t be beat,” and one the San Antonio resident hopes everyone will have the opportunity to appreciate someday.
In February, McNeel sold the land, owned by his family for generations, to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) for that very reason.
Conserving land conserves water
The land in far west Bexar County and Medina County expands the 12,000-acre Government Canyon State Natural Area by 823 acres and contributes to critical water resource conservation and groundwater recharge.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission directed department staff to move forward with acquiring the land in November, the same time commissioners approved another land purchase adjacent to the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area.
The agency paid $43 million for 3,073 acres — or about $14,000 an acre — to expand the popular park in Llano County, near Fredericksburg.
The Government Canyon deal closed in February, with the agency paying $8 million, or over $9,000 an acre, from the state’s Sporting Goods Sales Tax and the Land and Water Conservation Fund, according to a TPWD spokesman.
The going rate for undeveloped land in the Texas Hill Country varies according to the size of the property, its location and developability, said Andrea McGilvray, real estate broker for Cowboy Capital Realty in Bandera. She recently sold a 120-acre property with level land for about $8,000 an acre.
But conserving land is one way the state can prepare for future growth. “We’re still growing by leaps and bounds, and the only way we can actually conserve water is by having the water runoff going to the aquifer,” she said.
‘Fair and equitable access to nature’
The acquisition of McNeel’s property comes 20 years to the day that property known as Canyon Ranch was bought by TPWD to complete the long-running Government Canyon park project and to protect nine federally-listed endangered invertebrate species in the region.
For McNeel, the timing was right, after inheriting a half-interest in the land in 2019.
“We got pretty interested in the idea that we could find a way to help the problem in the state of Texas of having very, very, very little publicly accessible or public land,” he said. “So when the time came to start thinking about what to do with this property … an exciting opportunity just came up.”
The proximity of Government Canyon made the land attractive to TPWD, which, according to the commission’s meeting agenda, prioritizes acquiring adjacent properties from willing sellers to minimize operational and management conflicts and ensure conservation of the agency’s public lands.
McNeel said he has had many other offers to buy the land. “When you own land like this, you get texts daily or weekly from random, anonymous people asking to carve up the land and sell it,” he said.
But, as an architect and private landowner, McNeel wanted more for the wilderness where he grew up, camping and trail running — and for the creek beds, cliffs, hilltops, farmland and forests he knew so well.
“My values and beliefs about the built environment and what makes human life actually worth living and helps people to actually flourish is deeply aligned with this attitude of making sure there’s fair and equitable access to nature,” he said.
“What I work on, day in and day out is all sorts of projects involving how to interact with the land around us, and how to value the natural resources and the environment around us,” he added.
There is a conservation easement on the land, he said, that serves to protect the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone but can also limit subdivision of the land. The property sits just north and west of the booming Alamo Ranch area.
Government Canyon boasts more than 40 miles of trails, campsites and dinosaur tracks, and sits in the recharge zone. While plans for the newly acquired property that sits west of the park have not been announced, McNeel is gratified knowing the land, its resources and its future are protected.
“I think everyone can agree and see that life is better when more people have access to more amenities, or more people have access to wild places and nature, or even just have preserved swaths of land that you can drive past and know that that land is preserved,” he said.
