To the extent that they think of it at all, Texans probably associate the state’s General Land Office with the Alamo. The agency took control of the fabled site in 2011 and then, four years later, under Commissioner George P. Bush, initiated a controversial redevelopment plan that, in a very different form, is currently underway. Although the GLO initially occupied a beautiful, castle-like building on the Capitol grounds, it now resides several blocks north in a chocolate-colored monument to Lone Star brutalism, conjuring a rueful quip about a federal complex in Washington, D.C., once described as “ten floors of basement.”
But if the GLO’s trappings are modest, its mission isn’t. It has administered Texas’s vast public domain since it was established, in 1836, as the state’s first governm