Justin Phillip Hurst

The 12,000-acre Justin Hurst Wildlife Management Area is named in honor of a game warden by that name who was killed in the line of duty in 2007. The parcel was originally known as the Peach Point WMA and purchased using waterfowl stamp funds from 1985 to 1987 to become the first state WMA in Texas. The land had been part of the Peach Point Plantation, deeded to Stephen F. Austin by the Mexican government in 1830, and later developed for cotton and sugar cane by Emily and James Perry. The parcel had been sold in the early 1980s to petrochemical companies, and came close to industrial development, before intervention by the Nature Conservancy.