The Drive Is the Point
From downtown Dallas, you take I-30 east. About 105 minutes later you arrive at 13250 TX-11 in Cumby, Texas, the gate of a 158-acre tactical training facility. Most shooters in the DFW metro will look at that drive and treat it as a cost. It is not. The distance is exactly what makes the training possible. Land this size does not exist inside the loop, and the things you can do on it cannot be replicated by an urban indoor range no matter how good the lane is.
The Benjamin Guard sits on open East Texas ground for a reason. Real tactical work needs room. It needs distance, vehicles, structures, and the freedom to run live fire in directions an indoor bay will never allow. Ninety minutes of highway is a small price for capability you simply cannot buy closer to the city.
What 158 Acres Buys You
The centerpiece is the Dynamic Bay: 150 yards deep and 100 yards wide, rated for 60 people, live fire. That footprint is what lets the facility drive in full-size vehicles, aircraft fuselages, and buses for scenario work. You do not shoot at a paper target taped to a backstop. You work around and through real platforms, at distances that force you to manage movement, cover, and angles the way a real problem would. This is where Tactical Vehicle Operations runs, and where competitions are held.
An indoor range gives you a lane and a fixed distance. That has its place. But it cannot host a vehicle interdiction drill, it cannot run long-distance scenarios, and it cannot put 60 trained people on the same live-fire problem. The space is the capability. Remove the acreage and the training collapses back into static marksmanship.
The rest of the site is built the same way. The Shoot House Complex is 6,000-plus square feet across three independent leveled dry-fire structures, multi-room, designed to support simultaneous training tracks. The PT Area handles tactical fitness, functional movement, and load training, and is home to Fitness and Firearms. A full-cohort classroom in mission-brief configuration ties the live work to instruction. None of this fits on a city lot.
Who the Location Serves
Two groups make the drive worth it. The first is the DFW-metro shooter who wants real training instead of another hour on a static line. If you are serious about how you handle a carbine or a pistol under realistic conditions, the 105-minute drive is the gap between a square range and a facility that can actually build the scenario.
The second is East Texas law enforcement. The Benjamin Guard is TCOLE accredited through Grayson College, so qualifying courses count toward officers' continuing education. Agencies in the region get an accredited venue close to home with structures and live-fire capacity most departments cannot maintain on their own. For both groups, the location is the asset.
FIELD NOTE —The drive filters for intent. The people who make it are the ones who came to train.
Built for the Work, Not the Commute
The facility carries the name of Benjamin Milam, the Texas revolutionary who on December 5, 1835 led the assault on San Antonio de Béxar with the call, "Who will go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?" There is a direct family connection between Milam and the founders, and the operation is run by a team with backgrounds in special operations, federal contracting, and international law enforcement instruction. That is the standard the ground was chosen to meet.
Practical details are straightforward. Tactical Vehicle Operations runs two days in the Dynamic Bay. Combat Pistol and Combat Carbine courses are also offered, with the current schedule posted online. A digital waiver is required before your first live-fire session and takes about three minutes. Range rules are strict: brass-cased ammunition only, ANSI-rated eye protection, NRR 22+ ear protection, firearms unloaded until the firing line, and Range Safety Officer commands are absolute.
The construction underway adds 30 to 40 named founding-member bays, targeting the end of summer 2026. That is more permanent capacity, not a smaller drive. The math does not change, and it does not need to. East Texas is where the room is.
Make the Trip
Treat the distance as the feature it is. The drive east on I-30 buys you a 158-acre facility that an indoor range cannot match. When you are ready to train on it, review the current course schedule and register at /training.