Homestead 1
Available$239,000 · 6.07 acres
Screened from FM 956 by a line of hardwoods, then six acres of open prairie on high western ground. An open canvas with wide views and newly reseeded native grasses.
A WILDLIFE COMMUNITY IN FAYETTE COUNTY, TEXAS
The Homesteads at Walker Branch
The Community
Five acres here lives like fifty acres anywhere else.
The Homesteads at Walker Branch is a planned community of eleven homesteads, spread across eighty-eight acres in Fayette County, Texas. Ninety minutes from Houston, Austin, and San Antonio.
Larger homesteads offer a better value. Most planned communities out in the country run one to three acres. Ours start at five acres and go up to thirty acres — two to six times the space, at less cost per acre than other communities you've been looking at.
Your habitat acreage is managed for you by professionals. Most communities maintain the common areas and leave the rest to the owner. Here, the habitat on the acreage you own is on the same schedule as everything else, because the whole property is managed as one contiguous wildlife habitat. Your land professionals carefully work around your homestead area, which is yours to keep however you like it.
Your land qualifies for "ag-exempt" property tax valuation. In Texas, land properly managed for wildlife is taxed at agricultural rates. It takes real acreage and real work to qualify. You get the tax benefits of raw land, but within a planned community. You'll find that most other communities can't offer this.
Fenced at the perimeter, wide open once you're inside. Private and secure from the outside. The whole community's perimeter is fenced, except the forested creek on the eastern edge, where wildlife comes in. And every homestead sits behind its own electronic gate. Your homestead area — the house, the yard, whatever you want close at hand — will most likely be fenced too. But everything else, at least 70 acres across this 88-acre community, remains as open, spacious, connected wildlife habitat. And one set of covenants recorded with Fayette County is what keeps it that way.
- 1
- Community
- 88
- Total Acres
- 11
- Homesteads
- 90
- Minutes from Houston, Austin, and San Antonio
Certified habitat restoration work
Every homestead here carries its own Certified Texas Prairie designation from the Native Prairies Association of Texas — and together they make the first Certified Texas Prairie Community in the State of Texas.
Wetland pond, drawing wildlife for miles
Six acres of water at the center of the community, fronted by five homesteads. This is a magnet for migratory birds and other wildlife, which is what makes it the most valuable feature out here.
Hundreds of live oaks, post oaks, and pecans
One hundred seventy-one hardwood trees of significance, counted and tagged one at a time, plus dozens more along the creek, too thick to count.
Ongoing soil improvement, invasives control, and native seed planting
Seventy-one acres of native grasses and wildflowers, drilled in at a quarter-inch. Part of the community's grassland recovery plan and ongoing land management.
Year-round wildflowers and wildlife
The wildlife-viewing deck on Homestead 4 is a place to sit and watch, mornings and evenings, across all four seasons. This is what this community and the land were meant for.
Private and secure, wide open once you're inside
Eighty-two hundred linear feet of it, already standing. This fence dresses the community's frontage while still allowing wildlife and our land professionals to pass through.
Wildflowers and Wildlife
Every season out here will be your favorite.
The acoustic listening stations went up in the summer of 2025 and picked up no bobwhite quail at all — not that summer, not that fall, not through the winter. In April 2026, they started showing up. Spring. About that same time, the prairie starts throwing color: bluebonnets first, then Indian paintbrush and coreopsis, then the coneflowers, and it keeps rolling over into something else for months. Scissor-tails come back and set up on the fence lines. Bluebirds nest in their boxes, and by May there are mouths in them. As spring fades, the listening stations catch the quail at first light and again toward evening, which is when a covey calls to itself. Nobody released these here — they were earned. Summer. Monarchs move through on the milkweed. Lightning bugs (remember those?) come up out of the creek bottom in June. Cicadas in the oaks by day and frogs in the pond by night — this place is never quite silent. The deer bed down in the oak shade through the heat and walk out to the prairie at dusk to feed. You smell a summer rain out here twenty minutes before it gets to you. Fall. The grasses come into their own — little bluestem turns copper, the seed heads go to gold, and the whole field changes color from the ground up. The fall migration runs right over this county, and the pond collects what stops: wood ducks working the shallows, wading birds, whatever's moving south that week. Mornings get cool enough to sit outside, coffee in hand, and watch the place wake up. Winter. The prairie stays gold and standing all season. Sandhill cranes come through, and you hear them before you see them. The hardwoods go bare along the creek, and the nights get dark enough that the stars are the whole show — and cold enough that you'll want to get a fire going.
This is the kind of place you pass down, not pass through, and it continues to get better, year after year.
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Interactive Map
Homesteads
Conservation Features
Availability
One community.
Eleven homesteads.
Find yours.
From five to thirty acres, starting at $199,000. The question isn't really whether there's one in your size or price range. It's which piece of these eighty-eight acres you want to wake up on.
Homesteads 1, 2, and 3 sit high on open prairie, where the deer come out to feed at dusk. Homesteads 5, 6, 7, and 8 front the southern bank of the wetland pond, where the ducks land during migration. Homesteads 9 and 10 have dense wildlife cover, oaks for shade, and open grass between. Homestead 11 has Walker Branch running through the middle, with two places to build and a low-water crossing connecting them. Homestead 4 is its own experience entirely. Thirty acres — more than a third of the community — holding the north end of the wetland pond, a private half-acre pond with a footbridge into a heritage oak grove, acres of open prairie, and the wooded creek corridor along the east. Eighty-two significant hardwood trees, including an 87-inch live oak, the largest on the property.
Tap a homestead on the map or in the list below to see more details.
Browse the homesteads
Homestead 2
Available$239,000 · 6.07 acres
An outsized run of high-quality perimeter fence is already standing here — a real expense, already handled. Six acres of open prairie looking into the oaks along the shared drive.
Homestead 3
Available$349,000 · 8.75 acres
The highest ground at Walker Branch, and the largest of the three open-prairie homesteads. Set well back from the road down an oak-lined drive — the best vantage in the community, and a clean slate to design from. Horses allowed.
Homestead 4
Available$749,000 · 30.00 acres
Thirty acres holding every kind of feature at Walker Branch: the entire northern shoreline of the 6-acre wetland pond, a private half-acre pond, acres of open prairie, the wooded creek corridor, and 82 trees of significance. Plus, a wildlife-viewing deck and a hidden footbridge across the private pond. Well, cistern, and septic already in. Horses allowed.
Homestead 5
Sold$199,000 · 5.02 acres
The pond's southern shore, fenced on nearly every side, looking across into the heritage oak grove and private pond on Homestead 4.
Homestead 6
Available$199,000 · 5.05 acres
Frontage on the wetland pond, with a wide-open building site and long views across the prairie. Features a mature oak motte to design and site your homestead around.
Homestead 7
Available$199,000 · 5.01 acres
Pond frontage, with a large heritage oak standing at the water's edge — the kind of tree a house gets sited to keep in view. Watch the water pull the migrations through every spring and fall.
Homestead 8
Available$199,000 · 5.01 acres
Fronts the pond, then climbs. Frontage, a stretch of the high berm with long views back across the water, bottomland, and open prairie — four kinds of land on one homestead.
Homestead 9
Available$199,000 · 5.01 acres
A dense pocket of wildlife cover sitting out in the open prairie, providing a place for wildlife to den and hide after crossing the open ground. Wildlife doesn't just pass through this homestead. It makes its home here.
Homestead 10
Available$199,000 · 5.02 acres
The deepest stand of oaks at Walker Branch outside the heritage grove — 27 live oaks and a post oak, including a 77-inch live oak that has almost certainly stood longer than the road running past the community. This canopy formed over multiple generations of Texans.
Homestead 11
Available$299,000 · 7.65 acres
The creek this community is named for runs through the heart of it, with a band of forest along it — the corridor animals use to travel the length of Walker Branch. The creek splits the homestead into two distinct building sites joined by a low-water crossing, with two private entrances onto FM 956. Horses allowed.
See the land
Ride it with us.
Eighty-eight acres doesn't reveal much from the road, and each homestead sits behind its own electronic gate. So we take you across it. We've got a six-seat UTV, so bring whoever needs to see this with you, and we'll run you the length of the place — the prairie, the pond, the creek bottom, and the homesteads you're weighing. There's a comfortable, air-conditioned mobile office out there too, with a clean restroom, cold bottled water, and hot coffee. Start with a call. We'll answer what matters in your situation, tell you which homesteads are worth your time, and set up a time to come out and see the community.
Tours are by appointment. Mornings are best when it's hot outside; afternoons when it's cool. Bring your questions, and we'll have the UTV gassed up and ready.
