TX:'The Light of the World' grows in the shadows
'The Light of the World' grows in the shadows
Web Posted: 05/24/2008 09:43 PM CDT
By Todd Bensman
Express-News
KINGSBURY — Almost every day of the year, at least a few of the 27,600 motorists who drive Interstate 10 through this speck of a ranching community pull over to check out a curious fenced ranch just off the highway.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/images/cover/0525ranch.jpg
Jerry Lara/Express-News)
Opulence and the exotic abound at the Silver Wolf Ranch on Interstate 10 near Kingsbury.
Easily visible from the interstate, twin white domes of a massive structure poke up like mushrooms from the private 340-acre forested reserve. A giant bronze bison statue stands in plain view, as do live stick-legged emus and ostriches.
But tourists never get through the well-appointed limestone facade entrance that beckons them into The Silver Wolf Ranch. As they have for 10 years since the property came under new ownership, polite Spanish-speaking workers shoo away the camera-toting motorists with the same unrequited promise: the ranch is just about to open.
The land, a 40-minute drive from San Antonio, remains just as enigmatic to immediate neighbors left to ruminate — sometimes darkly — about relentless construction activity, howls of unseen wolves, reports of gun-carrying guards, and especially the tint-windowed SUV caravans for which the gates do occasionally open.
“I don't know nothing; I don't want to get involved,â€