Our Single Tract started out with 17 Patent recipients

What is supposed to be 1840 acres that are contiguous with no public roads entering the interior.  Only 2.5 miles of adjacent county road along the southern border.  Another county road stops at the far northwest corner of the tract.    One can still make out the railbed of a long-extinct railroad crossing a portion of the northwest part of the tract. We are cutting this into nine tracts for auction purposes that vary from 48 acres to 322 acres.  The east boundary of one tract will be a tad under 9000 feet in length.  The tract to the east of it will share a mile and a half of that boundary.

The entire County has a population of 3400 with 1000 in the county seat town and the five remaining "cities" have a total of 835.  This leaves 1565 to occupy the 645 square miles for an average of 2.5 per square mile.  That would suggest 7 people would live on this 1840 acres.  No one does.  Although, there are some dead ones in a little cemetery.  The current owner resides in a Texas city with about a quarter-million other people.

Just assembling the paper trail from all of those 17 Patents to the single ownership is quite a chore.  It helps being the only non-employee of the County digging through all of the deed books.  There was another visitor one day, but, he was in and out in less than 15 minutes.