French Island Ranch is 1,135 acres of mixed pasture, marshland, woodlands and lakes nestled in the confluence of Hillebrandt and Taylor Bayous near the town of LaBelle in Jefferson County, Texas. The area was once a sea of coastal plain and grassland, and French Island describes the topographical feature of an island of trees sitting in the unbroken sea of grass, pushed higher than the surrounding coastal prairie by the top of an underlying salt dome, like the similarly-named Pecan Island and Cow Island in neighboring Louisiana. French Island abuts the J.D. Murphree Wildlife Refuge operated by Texas Parks and Wildlife, and hosts large numbers of migratory waterfowl, alligators, otters, bobcats and other marsh and wetland-dwelling animal and plant life.
