PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Pond builders for ranch country off I-45: stock tanks, fishing ponds, and dams built in the post oak sand and clay around Fairfield, Teague, and Streetman.
The country around Fairfield runs sandy up top, which grows the post oaks, hides the clay, and asks the one question every pond quote here has to answer first.
Post oak savannah sand passes water, and a basin dug blind in it stays a damp disappointment. The clay that fixes it is almost always down there: sometimes shallow enough that the cut reaches it, sometimes deep enough that the basin needs a compacted core.
We answer with test holes before we quote, and the sealing plan goes on paper as its own line. Freestone County has too many half-full ponds dug by hope; ours hold because the ground got read first.
This is working cattle country, and it drains well: rolling ground with defined draws that feed a tank site exactly the way a dam wants. Pick the right draw, cut the core trench into the clay, and a Freestone tank fills on schedule and waters stock for decades.
Fairfield Lake taught this county what impounded water is worth. The private version is smaller, but it is yours, and it does not close.
Ranch work runs on straight answers, so the build process is an open book from the first phone call.
It starts with photos of the site and a rough idea of size. We answer with a same-day ballpark off the published price list, and if the number works for you, we schedule the site walk. No sales funnel, just a conversation.
We walk the draw with you, probe for clay, read the watershed feeding the site, and talk stock access, spillway routing, and what brush goes ahead of the dig. You get a real opinion about the best tank site on the place, not just the one you pointed at.
The quote reads like a plan, not a mystery: dig, dam, spillway, and any contingency for rock, each priced in machine days. If clearing is needed first, it is on the same sheet at our published day rates. What is written is what you pay.
Within a few weeks of signing, the lowboy delivers the iron. All we need from you is gate access wide enough for the machines and somewhere to drop the trailer. Everything else is on us.
Most ponds take two to five working days. The sequence never changes: strip and save the topsoil, cut the core trench, raise the dam in thin compacted lifts, shape the basin. Watch as much of it as you like from outside the swing radius.
The build ends with a walkthrough, not an invoice. Dam, spillway, slopes, and dressed banks, checked against the quote with you standing there. Anything off gets fixed before the lowboy is loaded.
A correctly sited tank in this county fills over one normal wet season, and draw fed sites can catch most of it in a few storms. The dam gets seeded the day shaping ends so the first rain finds grass.
Published, not hidden behind a form. Prices and build times are based on 6 feet of depth at center with a 4:1 bank.
| Pond Size | Starting Price at 6 ft depth, 4:1 bank | Build Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1/4 acre | from $12,300 | 2 to 3 days |
| 1/2 acre | from $19,200 | 3 to 4 days |
| 3/4 acre | from $23,300 | 4 to 5 days |
| 1 acre | from $27,000 | 5 to 6 days |
| 1 1/4 acre | from $30,400 | 6 to 7 days |
| 1 1/2 acre | from $33,800 | 7 to 8 days |
| 1 3/4 acre | from $36,800 | 8 to 9 days |
| 2 acre | from $39,500 | 9 to 10 days |
Chart prices are for a 6 foot deep pond at 4:1 banks. Sandy Freestone County sites can add tested sealing as a flagged line item, and the site walk settles it before anyone signs.
Size it, tell us what to do with the dirt, then draw the pond right on a photo of your land. Your estimate comes back by email, along with a preview of the finished water.
Every quote we write splits the same honest way. Here is what is inside the number and what gets flagged separately.
Every quote covers the complete pond: watershed-matched siting, staking, saved topsoil, a true core trench, a dam raised in compacted lifts, a shaped spillway, mowable slope finishes, and banks dressed with the topsoil we saved. Transport of the machines is included, as is the final walkthrough.
Sealing in the sandy stretches is the variable that gets tested and written as its own line. Brush clearing rides on the same quote at published day rates. Rock is occasional in this county rather than standard, and if we suspect it we say so at the walk instead of surprising you on day two.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Pond basin shaping, Gatesville
Dam construction, Gatesville
Third acre pond, ElginFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Between Fairfield, Teague, and Wortham the cow-calf outfits still run on surface water, and a shallow silted tank is a daily tax: muddy water, boggy edges, a herd walking too far. A properly deep tank in the right draw is ranch infrastructure that pays out every single August.
Fairfield sits on our route between Central Texas and the east Texas jobs, which means mobilization here is easy to schedule and cheap to share. Ranchers off 84 and 179 get big-outfit iron without big-outfit mobilization games.
Freestone County leases and family hunting tracts learned what a pond does: deer patterns bend around water, ducks find it by the second winter, and the camp gets a fishing hole. A tank cut for wildlife costs the same dirt money and pays twice.
This county cycles through real droughts, and shallow water is the first casualty. We cut tanks past six feet quickly and recommend eight where the ground allows, because the difference between a pond and a mud flat in a dry September is depth you bought once.
Stock water that holds depth through the dry months means the herd stays put, the grass gets grazed evenly, and nobody is hauling water down a county road in a heat wave.
Water bends wildlife patterns around it. A tank on a lease raises what the lease is worth, and the ducks that find it by the second winter are a bonus the dirt never advertised.
Stock a rebuilt tank on schedule and within three seasons the camp has bass worth frying. Same water, second job.
Improved ranch land with reliable surface water outsells dry dirt in every cycle. A tank is the improvement that never goes out of style in cattle country.
A pond is dirt work first, but it does not have to end there. One call covers everything from grass on the dam to fish in the water.
Every dam we shape gets seeded and blanketed against the spring storms; a bare dam in this county is a repair order waiting on a forecast.
Aeration keeps a working tank sweet through the hot months: circulation against stagnation, fewer weeds, healthier water for stock and fish alike.
A simple dock or a solid stock access slope both get planned into the grading while the machines are on site, which is when they are cheap.
Stocking a Freestone tank follows the standard script, forage first and bass a season later, and we hand over the depth map that tells the hatchery truck exactly what it is filling.
I highly recommend Pierce Land Clearing. They have the right equipment and professionals with skills required to make your property look wonderful.
Reggie, Google review
We cannot say enough good about the incredible service we received. We have 30 acres we are preparing for our future home that has never been lived on or maintained. Bobby listened to our vision.
Stephanie Cantrell, Google review
I had such a great experience with this team. Not only did they do a marvelous job but they are good people. Taylor is very personable, honest, with an amazing work ethic. His team is hardworking.
Dean Volkman, Google review
The site walk comes with vocabulary. Here is what the crew means when they say it.
The dry dam height above full pool, the safety margin that keeps a big storm inside the pond.
Every acre of ground that sheds rain toward your pond. It, not the hole, decides how fast you get water.
The water level at the bottom of the spillway, the highest the pond is designed to hold day to day.
Where the dam dirt comes from. On a well designed pond it is the basin itself, so every yard dug does double duty.
One acre of water a foot deep, about 326,000 gallons. The unit that decides whether a stock pond needs a state permit.
Saving the living top layer before the dig and dressing it back over the banks after, so grass takes the first season.
The published chart starts at $12,300 for a quarter acre at 6 feet on 4:1 banks, and the calculator above runs your own size and depth. Sandy sites can add tested sealing as a written line item. Photos of the draw get a real range the same day.
If the clay gets found first, yes. We probe before we promise: reach the clay with the cut when it is shallow, core the basin when it is not, and write the sealing plan into the quote. No Freestone tank of ours gets dug on hope.
Yes, and it is the efficient way to do it. We are a land clearing company that builds ponds, so the yaupon, mesquite, and post oak thinning happens with the same mobilization as the dig. One crew, one bill.
The right draw, a cored dam, depth past six feet, and banks a cow can reach without bogging. We cut a gentle stock slope on one bank, keep the rest steeper against weeds, and the tank waters the herd for decades.
Constantly. Half the tanks between Fairfield and Teague are generations old and half full of silt. Drain, dredge, reshape, rebuild the dam where it leaks, and the tank comes back deeper than anyone remembers it.
On most ranch land, no. Normal farm and stock ponds are exempt from state permitting and the county adds none. Bigger impoundments with real dam height deserve an engineering conversation, and we tell you honestly when a project crosses that line.
Chart pricing starts at 6 feet, and in drought country we recommend eight or more at center where the ground allows. Depth is the whole difference in a dry year, and the calculator shows exactly what it costs before you decide.
Two to five working days for most tanks once the iron arrives, per the chart. Clearing adds a day or two on brushy sites. Fill time depends on the draw, but a correctly sited Freestone tank generally stands full within its first wet season.
Photos, a rough size, and your county road gets a real range the same day. We pass through on I-45 constantly, and the site walk is free.