San Saba County ranch, owned by one family for generations, hits market

A sprawling ranch in Texas Hill Country, held by the same family for generations, is being publicly offered for sale for the first time ever. The nearly 1,500-acre Zodiac Ranch, located about 16 miles west of the town of San Saba in its eponymous county, was recently listed by Sam Shackelford of Republic Ranches for $17.875 million. Photos show a remarkably beautiful and unusually large plot of land for a region of Texas that has seen land values skyrocket. In fact, while the price of Zodiac Ranch makes it unaffordable for…almost anyone, the listed cost works out to about $12,500 per acre, which is comparatively a steal for a large legacy property in Hill Country. The $80 million Mt. Solitude Ranch, outside of San Antonio, was listed for closer to $22,000 per acre and the Johnson Legacy River Ranch, if sold in full, is about $23,331 per acre. The average cost per acre of rural land in Hill Country at the end of 2022 was $7,127, though that was in the middle of a booming rural land market that has cooled off a bit, according to Texas A&M's Real Estate Research Center.