For three years, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has wanted to create a big regional park that would be easily accessible to Fort Worth and Dallas residents.

Now the scope of that plan may hinge on discussions between two prominent North Texas business and philanthropic figures: Alice Walton, one of the richest people in Texas, and Bob Simpson, one of the highest-paid executives in the country.

Walton, 58, the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, has already put together about 3,000 acres along the Brazos River in Palo Pinto County, a few miles downstream from Possum Kingdom Lake. She says that she is working with the Nature Conservancy and the parks department and that the land will eventually become a state park.

Her vision for the Brazos River property is that it would eventually be bigger, wilder and more devoted to preservation than most state parks. And it would be within a 90-minute drive for millions of urban dwellers in the Metroplex.

Simpson, 60, chairman and chief executive of XTO Energy in Fort Worth, outbid the Nature Conservancy for 2,000 acres just downstream from Walton’s 3,000 acres.

He owns a ranch across the river from the acreage he has under contract. He said he’s trying to build a retreat for his family, and emphasized in an interview that he’s just as committed to preservation as Walton. He has talked with her about her park plan, and hasn’t ruled out making a donation.

"I like her. She’s done a lot of good things for the Brazos River and that area," Simpson said. "I’m still looking into helping her with the project, whether that might involve some land or money."

Simpson did note that other land is for sale near the two properties. It doesn’t have as much river frontage.

The Nature Conservancy hopes that a deal can be made to combine the properties for the park.

The land Simpson is buying, known as Chick Bend, includes about five miles of riverfront. Both properties feature towering cliffs, woods and pristine wildlife habitat. Together, the two tracts would have 12 to 13 miles of riverfront.

Combining the two tracts would create "a fantastic state park, on the order of an Enchanted Rock, a Big Bend or a Big Thicket," said Jeff Francell, director of land protection for the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit land preservation group.

Francell, Walton and state parks officials still hope to buy some of the land now under contract to Simpson.

"A donation would be awesome," Francell said. "Short of that, it would be great to sell all of it or part."

Simpson said he might also consider a conservation easement on the land, something the Nature Conservancy specializes in. It’s a legal agreement to preserve open land from development, usually in exchange for money and a tax break.

Neither Walton nor Simpson would reveal what they paid for the land. The Nature Conservancy had appraised the land that Simpson bought at $7,500 an acre.

Two bends of the river

Walton and Simpson said they love the outdoors. In separate interviews, they both cited Goodbye to a River, John Graves’ 1960 book about a canoe trip down the Brazos.

Walton, who is worth an estimated $19 billion, according to Forbes magazine, owns an area known as Fortune Bend, which includes about eight or nine miles of riverfront property.

Walton said she began buying land for the park in 1999, shortly after she moved to Texas. The rolling hills of the Cross Timbers area reminded her of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, where she used to camp as a child, she said.

"You didn’t have to be rich to go hunting, and you didn’t have to be rich to be able to go camping," she said. "My dad would take a month every summer and we’d go camping in the different state parks."

XTO executive Simpson, who earned $56.6 million in salary and bonuses last year, has a history of philanthropy. He was named one of the 30 best CEOs in the country by Barron’s magazine in 2007. XTO has spent millions to restore historic buildings in downtown Fort Worth, and the company and Simpson donated a combined $10 million to his alma mater, Baylor University.

Simpson said he’s been visiting the Brazos River since he was a child. His parents were from nearby Graham, and he grew up on cotton farms in Crosbyton and Cisco.

"I got the dirt in my blood growing up; this is just an extension of that," he said. "This is not the only river frontage I’m protecting. I’ve got several miles of it in Parker County that I’m protecting."

A regional park

For years, Walton has fought to preserve the area from commercial activity. When rock quarries were dumping silt in the river, she and other residents pressed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to do something about it. Walton eventually got Gov. Rick Perry involved, and the state obtained a court order blocking quarry dumping.

Walton said the campaign against the rock quarries, along with a 2005 law that protected parts of the Brazos, were steppingstones in her plan to assemble the park.

A spokesman for Perry said he’s aware of Walton’s plan to donate the land but declined further comment.

The state parks department has been looking for land for a big regional park since a flap erupted in 2007 over plans to sell 400 acres of undeveloped parkland along Eagle Mountain Lake in Tarrant County. Perry announced that he wanted to sell the land to a developer, with an eye toward building a bigger regional park near the Metroplex.

The Eagle Mountain land was spared from development when private donors and the Tarrant Regional Water District bought it for $9.6 million.