The 428-acre Dolen Ranch has never before been offered for sale on the open market.
By Katharine Jose, Managing Editor Chron.com Nov 3, 2024
When it comes to its multimillion-dollar properties, the Greater Houston real estate market is known for a few things: over-the-top mansions, architecturally significant homes by well-known designers, and, once in a while, a high-profile teardown. With the occasional exception, very old properties are rare. But a Liberty County property just listed for sale by Republic Ranches is about as old as they get in Texas—it has literally never been publicly offered for sale before.
The 428-acre Dolen Ranch, located less than a hour’s drive from Houston, has been operating as a farm and ranch since the early 1800s, and has been owned and managed by just one family for most of that time. That’s well before the railroad arrived in Cleveland (1900), and before the adjacent small unincorporated community of Dolen had a post office (1903, and that post office only lasted until 1914).
We’ve covered a handful of ranches that have never been offered on the open market, or hadn’t hit the market in many, many years, and they often were acquired for the first time from a land grant. This was one way nearly all the successive early governments of Texas tried to convince immigrants from Europe or other areas of the U.S. to settle down across its massive expanse.
In addition to farming and ranching, the listing notes that Dolen Ranch—of which photos show massive expanses of green pastures—supports a great deal of wildlife and it could be used for hunting as well. The acreage has low fences, lots of trees and plenty of water sources, including some wet-weather creeks, a few ponds and Winter’s Bayou along one of its borders.
Unlike a lot of the legacy ranches we’ve written about, which often have little in the way of a built environment, the Dolen Ranch is home to a 4,000-square-foot home that’s less than 10 years old. The property also has an older 1,800-square-foot house and a smaller two-bedroom, one-bathroom cabin.
https://www.chron.com/homes/article/texas-legacy-ranch-hits-market-19877797.php