Free Republic

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — South Texas ranchers brought nilgai antelope from a California zoo decades ago, when it became fashionable to stock their sprawling acreage with exotic quarry. These days the species native to India and Pakistan are not so much a rarity in South Texas as a nuisance. For cattle ranchers they are a possible nemesis, threatening to spread a deadly tick to their herds. Federal wildlife officials say they are competing with native Rio Grande Valley species for food and trampling the brush they are trying so hard to preserve. The fast-running, 600-pound antelope have wandered all around the...

America's biggest ranch, which is larger than New York City, goes on sale for $713million in Texas The Waggoner Ranch is the largest contiguous ranch in the United States spanning six counties in Northern Texas Listing marks end of decades-long court battle among heirs of cattle baron W.T. Waggoner who founded it in 1923 The estate includes the 510,000-acre ranch with two main compounds, hundreds of homes and 20 cowboy camps Also included are hundreds of quarter-horses, thousands of cattle, 1,200 oil wells and 30,000 acres of cultivated land It reportedly falls within 'super asset class', akin to selling the...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

A so-called “NAFTA Superhighway” earned support from the city’s mayor and discussion among residents Monday during a public hearing on the Texas Department of Transportation’s I-69 project. TxDOT held a public hearing at the Brownsville Events Center Monday to explain the progress of the Trans-Texas Corridor, a future segment of Highway I-69, which will link the U.S.-Mexico border to the U.S.-Canada border. After a short presentation, the floor was open for comments. Among the local politicians, college students and retirees at the hearing there was a wide range of opinion on the project. According to Mario Jorge, district engineer for...

AUSTIN — The southernmost stretch of the proposed Canada-to-Mexico interstate could come to the Rio Grande Valley as a brand new toll road cutting through untouched ranchland rather than an upgrade to highways 77 or 281. The proposal by the Texas Department of Transportation for the road known as Trans-Texas Corridor 69 is drawing sharp criticism from South Texas landowners and elected officials who say the state should instead spend its money turning one or both existing highways into interstates. Three options are on the table for building the first interstate to the Valley: expansion of Highway 281, expansion of...