{
  "title": "Wildfire Risk in Palo Pinto County, TX 2026 | Satelife",
  "description": "Palo Pinto County wildfire risk analyzed with satellite data: Graford near Possum Kingdom, a nine-exit community bottleneck, and a real Park Road 36 property report. Check your address.",
  "image": "https://satelife.ai/images/wildfire-risk/palo-pinto-county/palo-pinto-county-locator.png",
  "canonical": "https://satelife.ai/wildfire-risk/texas/palo-pinto-county/",
  "content": "[Home](/)›[Wildfire Risk](/wildfire-risk/)›[Texas](/wildfire-risk/texas/)›Palo Pinto County\n\nPalo Pinto County, Texas · 2026\n\n# Wildfire risk in Palo Pinto County: a low parcel score with a _moderate community constraint_\n\nOur Satelife report for Park Road 36 near Graford returns **23.55 / 100 — Low**, with 0.0% modelled probability of flames over four feet. The community analysis is the sharper warning: **31.37 / 100 Moderate**, with 160 structures behind only nine exits and a **47.2-metre** single point of failure.\n\n[Get your Palo Pinto County wildfire risk PDF →](/#cta) [See the Graford case study ↓](#case-study)\n\n![Satellite locator map of Palo Pinto County, Texas, with the county boundary outlined and Graford, Palo Pinto, Mineral Wells and Strawn marked](/images/wildfire-risk/palo-pinto-county/palo-pinto-county-locator.webp)\n\nPalo Pinto County on satellite imagery — Graford, Palo Pinto, Mineral Wells and Strawn marked across the Cross Timbers and Possum Kingdom lake-country interface. Imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics.\n\nLocal context\n\n## The county where lake-country recreation became a _structure-loss fire story_\n\nPalo Pinto County sits where North Texas grass, brush, reservoir shoreline development and Cross Timbers tree cover start to overlap. Graford and the Possum Kingdom side of the county are the most visible wildfire interface because they concentrate homes along irregular roads, steep banks and coves rather than across a square rural grid.\n\nThe modern reference event is the **2011 Possum Kingdom Complex**, which burned roughly **126,000 acres** and destroyed **168 homes**. That acreage is not just a historical footnote. It explains why a county whose current case-study parcel scores low still needs a community page: the structure-loss pattern here is about where homes sit in relation to water, vegetation and access, not just about one parcel’s standing fuel today.\n\n![Historic courthouse district scene in Palo Pinto County, Texas, representing the county’s long-settled civic core away from the reservoir-edge WUI](/images/wildfire-risk/palo-pinto-county/courthouses-of-palo-pinto-county-palo-pinto-texas-historical.webp)\n\nPalo Pinto County’s older civic core — a reminder that the wildfire exposure is concentrated more heavily in the reservoir and dispersed-lot interface than in the historic town center. Source: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Courthouses_of_Palo_Pinto_County,_Palo_Pinto,_Texas_Historical_Marker_\\(7705911086\\).jpg) (CC BY 2.0).\n\nSources: regional reporting and public-agency summaries of the 2011 Possum Kingdom Complex; parcel and community figures from Satelife reports generated 25 July 2026.\n\nTerrain & fuel\n\n## The parcel itself is calm; the lake-country road pattern is _not_\n\nThe Park Road 36 property reads as a relatively quiet parcel on the layers that usually dominate a Texas headline. Climate is **60.4 / 100**, vision **52 / 100**, terrain **40 / 100**, vegetation **22.4 / 100**, hazard **18.0 / 100**, and both fire-spread simulation and fire history score **5 / 100**. That is how a lake country property lands at 23.55 overall instead of much higher.\n\n![Satellite close-up of the Graford case-study area in Palo Pinto County showing clustered development, shoreline geometry and a limited road network](/images/wildfire-risk/palo-pinto-county/graford-closeup.webp)\n\nGraford-area community close-up — clustered development and limited road options around the Possum Kingdom interface. Imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics.\n\nThat quiet parcel result is why this page has to pivot quickly to the neighborhood run. Palo Pinto’s exposure is not best understood as “this lot has extreme fuel.” It is better understood as “a lot of homes share a small number of ways out in a landscape that has already shown it can produce major structure loss.”\n\nEvacuation\n\n## Nine exits, one station, and a _47.2-metre_ bottleneck\n\nThe neighborhood analysis is the page’s main finding. It looks nothing like the parcel-level calm.\n\n160structures in the analyzed community footprint\n\n9independent exits across 161.8 hectares\n\n17.78structures per exit route\n\n47.2 msingle point of failure detected on the network\n\n1OSM-mapped fire station serving the analyzed area\n\n0.3 minfastest modelled engine time; hotspot zones at 0.9–1.9 minutes\n\nThat combination is unusual. The first engine is extremely close, yet the community is still exit- constrained. Palo Pinto’s problem is not reach time in the abstract. It is how much development is stacked behind how few routes once a reservoir-edge settlement begins to fill in.\n\n![Excerpt from a Satelife wildfire risk report for Park Road 36 near Graford showing suppression reach, nearby stations and property road-access findings](/images/wildfire-risk/palo-pinto-county/report-road-access.webp)\n\n**Report excerpt** — Road access: suppression reach & egress, Satelife Wildfire Risk Report, Park Road 36, Graford TX 76449 (July 2026). Drive-times are modelled on the public road graph and OSM-mapped stations; decision support, not an evacuation plan.\n\nHazard framing\n\n## Low at the lot, moderate in the neighborhood, because roads and structure density _scale differently_\n\nThe key Palo Pinto contrast is numerical and direct. The property score is **23.55 Low**. The neighborhood score is **31.37 Moderate**. The federal flame-length model stays at **0.0%** for both four-foot and eight-foot exceedance at the parcel. The shift upward at community scale is therefore not a hidden fuel story. It is an access-and-density story.\n\n23.55property composite score — Low tier\n\n31.37community score — Moderate tier\n\n52AI vision layer — the property’s highest score\n\n0.0%probability of flames over 4 ft and over 8 ft\n\nThis is what makes Palo Pinto County different from the other new Texas pages. Kendall and Comal are low because the parcel and the community both stay fairly forgiving. Hays is moderate because access is already biting at the parcel scale. Palo Pinto is the one where the wider neighborhood geometry is materially more concerning than the single lot you might be buying.\n\nIn Palo Pinto County the lot can look calm while the settlement pattern around it does not.\n\nCase study\n\n## One address on Park Road 36, _scored today_\n\nWe ran a full Satelife wildfire-risk report for a property on **Park Road 36, Graford TX 76449**. The composite returns **23.55 / 100 — Low tier**, at **0.74 confidence**.\n\n![Excerpt from a Satelife wildfire risk report for Park Road 36 near Graford showing per-layer contributions including Climate 60.4, Vision 52, Terrain 40, Vegetation 22.4 and Hazard 18.0](/images/wildfire-risk/palo-pinto-county/report-per-layer.webp)\n\n**Report excerpt** — Per-layer contributions, Satelife Wildfire Risk Report, Park Road 36, Graford TX 76449 (25 July 2026). Composite 23.55/100, Low tier, scored under the United States (`usa_generic`) adapter.\n\nWhat drives the score:\n\n-   **Climate: 60.4 / 100.** The highest scalar in the property report.\n-   **Vision: 52 / 100.** The imagery read sees meaningful vegetation and exposure around the structure.\n-   **Terrain: 40 / 100.** Enough relief to matter without forcing a higher tier on its own.\n-   **Vegetation: 22.4 / 100 and hazard 18.0 / 100.** The key reasons the parcel stays Low.\n-   **Road access: 0 / 100.** The lot itself is not the access problem; the surrounding community is.\n\nThe report-backed answer for Graford is split: maintain the parcel, but do not confuse parcel calm with community resilience.\n\nThe mitigation plan is correspondingly conservative at the lot scale: **maintain current defensible space and home hardening**. The larger operational issue remains the shared road network.\n\nInsurance & real estate\n\n## Lake-country property needs a community reading, not just a parcel reading\n\nPalo Pinto County is a good example of why county and neighborhood pages exist alongside parcel reports. A buyer looking at reservoir-edge property can easily understand the lot and still miss the fact that the surrounding settlement has only nine exits for 160 structures. Texas offers no official wildfire hazard zone map to fill that gap for them.\n\nThere is also no statewide mitigation-discount rule that converts defensible space into a guaranteed premium break. Underwriters can respond to documentation; they are not required to use one common Texas wildfire schedule. If admitted coverage fails, the backstop is the **Texas FAIR Plan Association**, available only after at least two carriers writing in Texas decline comparable coverage.\n\nFor Palo Pinto property specifically, the useful diligence document is the one that pairs the parcel score with the neighborhood geometry. The latter is the part listing photos and county averages do not tell you.\n\nSources: Texas Department of Insurance · Texas FAIR Plan Association · Texas Property Code §5.008.\n\nRisk reduction\n\n## What Palo Pinto County homeowners _can actually do_\n\nThe property-level prescription is standard: keep the first five feet ember-resistant, preserve lean and open defensible space, and keep the structure hardened. The community-level prescription is less personal and more strategic: understand which exit you are actually likely to use and how many other homes are behind it.\n\nThe best comparison is [Comal County](/wildfire-risk/texas/comal-county/). Graford’s community analysis shows **17.78 structures per exit**; Bulverde’s shows **1.04 structures per exit**. Both pages publish low parcel scores. The difference is that Comal’s roads are currently generous for the number of homes using them, while Palo Pinto’s are already carrying a much tighter load.\n\nCoverage\n\n## ZIP codes we cover in Palo Pinto County\n\nSatelife runs address-level wildfire reports across every ZIP code in Palo Pinto County. The ZIPs below are the Cross Timbers, lake-country interface and Wildland-Urban Interface communities we are asked about most. One caveat that is the whole point of what we do: the risk score is computed for **your parcel**, not the ZIP, so two homes on the same street can land in different tiers. Find your area, then [run your address](/#cta).\n\nZIP code\n\nCommunity\n\nWhy it is on the map\n\n76449\n\nGraford\n\nPark Road 36 case study near the Possum Kingdom lake-country interface\n\n76484\n\nPalo Pinto\n\nCounty seat and rural ranchland corridor\n\n76067\n\nMineral Wells\n\nLargest population center on the county’s east side\n\n76475\n\nStrawn\n\nSouthwestern county grass and ranch fuels\n\nZIP areas per USPS. Texas publishes no statewide fire hazard severity zone map; Wildland-Urban Interface framing per Texas A&M Forest Service.\n\nWhere to go next\n\n## Palo Pinto County wildfire risk _in context_\n\n[Texas wildfire risk The statewide picture: no hazard map, eight county pages, three fire regimes](/wildfire-risk/texas/) [Bastrop County wildfire risk Lost Pines, the 2011 Complex Fire, Tahitian Village case study](/wildfire-risk/texas/bastrop-county/) [Randall County wildfire risk Canyon, Palo Duro edge, and a moderate parcel without extreme flame-length exceedance](/wildfire-risk/texas/randall-county/) [Hutchinson County wildfire risk Panhandle grassland, Smokehouse Creek, Fritch case study](/wildfire-risk/texas/hutchinson-county/) [Create a wildfire evacuation plan Zones, egress routes, refuge areas](/wildfire-evacuation-plan/) [How Satelife calculates wildfire risk Data sources, score composition, honest limits](/wildfire-risk/methodology/) [Run a wildfire risk report PDF + score + mitigation plan](/#cta)\n\nFAQ\n\n## Frequently asked questions about _Palo Pinto County wildfire risk_\n\nIs Palo Pinto County a high wildfire risk county?\n\nThe property we scored is not. A Satelife report for Park Road 36 near Graford returns 23.55 / 100 in the Low tier, with 0.0% probability of flames over four feet and over eight feet. But the neighborhood analysis is higher at 31.37 / 100 Moderate because 160 structures sit behind only nine exits, with a 47.2-metre chokepoint on the modeled network. In Palo Pinto County the community geometry is worse than the parcel headline.\n\nWhat major wildfire history matters in Palo Pinto County?\n\nThe big modern reference is the 2011 Possum Kingdom Complex in and around Palo Pinto County, which burned roughly 126,000 acres and destroyed 168 homes according to contemporaneous regional reporting and Texas Parks and Wildlife sources. That event is the county-scale reminder that the lake-country interface can turn from recreation landscape to structure-loss landscape very quickly.\n\nWhy is the neighborhood score Moderate if the property score is Low?\n\nBecause the community has a much tighter exit picture than the parcel. The Graford-area analysis finds 17.78 structures per exit route, one mapped station, and a 47.2-metre single point of failure. Those are community-scale constraints, and they can dominate even when the specific lot does not carry extreme vegetation or hazard numbers.\n\nHow fast is fire response in the Graford case study?\n\nVery fast for the first engine and not very redundant. The community analysis finds one mapped station with a 0.3-minute fastest modeled response, and hotspot zones at 0.9 to 1.9 minutes. That is excellent initial reach, but it is still one-station geometry.\n\nWhat mitigation does the Park Road 36 report recommend?\n\nMaintain current defensible space and home hardening. The parcel itself is presently a Low-tier case; the larger concern is how many homes share how few exits in the surrounding lake-country road network.\n\nScores and evacuation figures on this page are drawn from Satelife wildfire-risk reports generated on 25 July 2026 under the United States (`usa_generic`) adapter: a property report for Park Road 36, Graford TX 76449, and a community analysis for the Graford-area case study. Texas publishes no statewide fire-hazard-severity map, so the hazard layer is backfilled from the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities model. The 2011 Possum Kingdom Complex figures are contextual public-source history, not a direct scored input to the report. Drive-times are modelled on OSM-mapped stations and the current road graph. Satelife reports are informational decision support — not a substitute for official evacuation orders, state or federal hazard determinations, or an insurer’s underwriting judgment.\n\n## What does _your Palo Pinto County parcel_ look like, layer by layer?\n\nIf you own or are buying in Palo Pinto County — Graford, Palo Pinto, Mineral Wells or Strawn — get the address-level answer: PDF, per-layer score, and a prioritized mitigation plan.\n\n[Start with your address →](/#cta)\n\n[![PRR](/images/prr.png)](/ficha-de-website-voucher-satelife.pdf)\n\n© 2024–2026 Satelife, Lda. All rights reserved.\n\nSatelife reports are for informational purposes only and do not constitute insurance, financial, or legal advice."
}