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It’s a trail so big, so long that it’s far wider than Texas. It doesn’t yet exist, but it will be a trail that will take people from nearly sea level — to the top of Texas, and everything in between.
Charlie Gandy created a nonprofit that’s designed a 1,500-mile walking trail across Texas that they’re calling the xTx. It’s not so crazy an idea; many parts of the country have long walking trails. Gandy notes that the Lone Star State though, doesn’t.
“This trail is a TXDOT engineer’s worst nightmare, because there's no straight lines in it. It maneuvers about with the contour of the land,” he said.
Gandy’s designed a curlicue route, which nearly doubles the 850 miles of I-10’s east-to-west traverse. That’s not by accident.
“This is the dirty route across Texas. It's the toughest, hardest, dirtiest route,” he said.
Texas has a peculiarity: Gandy said that there’s a lot of Texas nearly no one’s ever seen. And here’s why: 93% of Texas is privately-owned, and that gives the X-Tx an additional value.
“You know what? There's some secrets out there. This is hidden Texas,” Gandy said.
There is a method to his so-called madness: he’s taking existing infrastructure — quiet backroads through counties, state and national parks-- and linking them together. Here’s the planned route:
“From the Quicksand Creek on the Louisiana border, through the pine forests, through San Marcos out into the hill country,” he said.
The trail then cuts west through the craggy, oak-covered limestone hills.
“And then down into Big Bend, and then up to Pene Ferguson's Ranch, which is just south of Marfa, and then into Marfa, the Soho of Western Texas, and then up to the highest peak in the state, Guadalupe Peak, and then on over to El Paso,” Gandy said.
Out west, county and state parks are fewer and further between, so much of the route goes through private ranches, including Pene Ferguson’s in Presidio County.
“The overall acreage of the ranch is around 20,000 acres,” she said. “For cattle ranching purposes, you need about 10 acres per cow.”
Like most out here, having a ranch doesn’t actually make her wealthy.
“We are what everyone has always called, land rich and money poor. So it's been handed down through, interestingly enough, through the women for the last three generations,” Ferguson said.
In this family it’s the women who have run the ranch. Most Texas ranchers lease to deer hunters to augment the little they make on cattle. Leasing can add 30 to 50 grand of income per season.
And so Ferguson looks to find new revenue streams as raising cattle becomes less profitable. She’s turned her old ranch headquarters into an AIRBNB and looks forward to the people she’ll meet on the xTx.
“I think a lot of them are people who are interested in history and interested in learning and very curious and open minded, and those are all welcome things,” she said.
Gandy only unveiled the xTx 6 months ago, but he’s finding more and more ranchers like Ferguson. On Monday he’s holding an event where he’s walking the first 100 miles of it.
“March the 10th’s a Monday morning, at 7 a.m. at Quicksand Creek on the Louisiana border we’ll be taking off on horses, on mountain bikes and hiking,” he said.
Gandy looks at this process not so much as building a trail, but as creating some magic.
“We like to think that we're rebooting Texas here,” he said.
He wants to see the adventurous get outdoors on the trail and challenge themselves.
“Because in that is learning. In that is slowing down, getting out of reach of the cell phones and listening to the voices in your mind. There is some magic in that, and that's what we're creating,” Gandy said.
If the xTx gets built, it’ll join the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail as one of the top 10 longest in the nation.
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