SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
It is a trail so big and so long that it's far wider than Texas. It doesn't exist yet, but Texas Public Radio's Jack Morgan says eventually, it will be a trail that will take people from nearly sea level to the top of Texas and everywhere in between.
JACK MORGAN, BYLINE: A nonprofit is designing a 1,500-mile walking trail across Texas that they're calling the xTx. And many parts of the country have long walking trails, but the lone star state doesn't.
CHARLIE GANDY: (Laughter) You know, this trail is a TxDOT engineer's worst nightmare 'cause there's no straight lines in it. It maneuvers about with the contour of the land.
MORGAN: This is all Charlie Gandy's idea, and TxDOT is the Texas Department of Transportation, whose long, straight freeways cross the state. Gandy's designed a curlicue route, which nearly doubles the 850 miles of I-10's east-to-west traverse.
GANDY: This is the dirty route across Texas. It's the toughest, hardest, dirtiest route.
MORGAN: Gandy says that there's a lot of Texas that nearly no one's ever seen, and here's why - 93% of Texas is privately owned.
GANDY: Well, you know what? There's some secrets out there. This is hidden Texas.
MORGAN: He says he's taking existing infrastructure - quiet back roads through counties, state and national parks - and linking them together. Here's the planned route.
GANDY: From Quicksand Creek on the Louisiana border, through the pine forest, out into the hill country.
MORGAN: The trail then cuts west through the craggy, oak-covered limestone hills.
GANDY: 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.
MORGAN: 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.
PENE FERGUSON: The overall acreage of the ranch is around 20,000 acres. For cattle ranching purposes, you need about 10 acres per cow.
MORGAN: Like most out here, having a ranch doesn't actually make her wealthy.
FERGUSON: 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.
MORGAN: 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 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.
FERGUSON: 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.
MORGAN: Gandy only unveiled the xTx six months ago, but he's finding more and more ranchers like Ferguson. On Monday, he's walking the first 100 miles of it.
GANDY: March the 10, so Monday morning, 7 a.m. at Quicksand Creek on the Louisiana border, we'll be taking off on horses, on mountain bikes and hiking.
MORGAN: Gandy thinks he's not so much building a trail as creating some magic.
GANDY: We like to think that we're rebooting Texas here.
MORGAN: He wants to see the adventurous get out and challenge themselves.
GANDY: 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.
MORGAN: If the xTx gets built, it'll join the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail in the top 10 longest in the nation.
I'm Jack Morgan, near the route for the xTx, in Boerne, Texas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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