Land in Avalon, Italy and Milford

Italy took the Missouri, Kansas and Texas line in December 1890, and had been named in 1880 for a climate somebody thought resembled sunny Italy. Milford was laid out in 1854 on Mill Creek valley land bought at fifty cents an acre and got the Dallas and Waco road in 1890. Forreston grew around a depot on ground Captain Carr Forrest gave for it. Avalon is the exception: settlers came to Chambers Creek in the 1860s and the post office opened in 1881, but no railroad ever arrived — which is why it’s still a crossroads while the others became towns.

Italy sits on I-35E at exit 386 and Milford at exit 381, with U.S. 77 running through both as Main Street. Avalon is out at State Highway 34 and FM 55; Forreston is eight miles south of Waxahachie on the same road. Dallas is 44 miles from Italy and 48 from Milford. Ground this close to two interstates gets priced by people who aren’t farming it.

Ellis County touches Dallas County along its northern edge, and the built-up front has reached Midlothian, Red Oak and Waxahachie. It has not reached Avalon, Italy or Milford. The distance between those two statements is what a buyer in this part of the county is actually looking at.

Southern Ellis is one soil story: deep, dark, cracking alkaline clay on a gently sloping plain between 300 and 700 feet. It holds a stock tank without help and it moves under a slab. The Austin Escarpment, the chalk ridge running through the county, is what slows the drainage to the southeast.

Elm Branch Solar at Bardwell — 135 megawatts, running since the end of 2021, under a power agreement with L3Harris — is the built project in this part of the county, and three more solar and storage projects sit in the ERCOT queue for Ellis County with dates in 2027 and 2028. The very large data-center campuses people have read about are at Midlothian and Red Oak, twenty-five to thirty miles north of this ground. If someone tells you they are next door, they aren’t.