Albion Shepard
Sea Captain and founder of Marathon, Texas
Albion Shepard built this two story
adobe house and the carriage house
behind it in 1890. It still stands today
and is owned by the Gage Hotel.
Story and photography by Danielle Gallo
W
hen the tracks of the
Galveston,
Harrisburg and San
Antonio Railway reached pres-
ent-day Marathon in March of
1882, there wasn’t much of a
settlement there, though the
railroad crew noted some set-
tlers in the area. The few resi-
dents were mostly clustered
around Fort Peña Colorado 5
miles to the south, where fresh
water and the protection of the
Army afforded early settlers a
measure of security from the
harsh desert and occasional
border violence. The fort’s
inception in 1879 provided an
oasis of civilization in an other-
wise wild landscape.
With the railroad came a
swift means of communication
with the outside world, access
to and transportation for goods
and raw materials – and for-
mer sea captain Albion
Shepard, who first passed
through the area in 1881 as a
8
surveyor for Southern Pacific.
The old wood-fired and later
coal-fired engines required fre-
quent stops for water, and find-
ing good wells for the trains in
the arid Big Bend was of para-
mount importance. In 1882,
the railroad assigned Capt.
Shepard the duty of naming
Southern Pacific’s water stops
between Del Rio and El Paso.
A strong well had been dug and
a pump house installed
between Alpine and the thriv-
ing town of Haymond, west of
Sanderson. Shepard felt the
grassy hills of the area greatly
resembled Greece, and so he
named the water stop
Marathon after the Grecian
city famous for the Battle of
Marathon, in 490 B.C.
According to the legend of
Marathon, one Pheidippides
was sent from Marathon to
Athens to announce the
Grecian victory over the
Persians, whereby he ran the
entire 26.2 miles without stop-
ping, announced the good
news and died immediately of
exhaustion.
The town of Marathon lies
in the Marathon Basin, a valley
surrounded by gently rolling
hills, ridges of Caballos
Novaculite, a distinctive and
ancient form of rock, and vol-
canic mountains. Shepard
decided to make the area his
home. He traded his property
interests on the Great Lakes for
the present-day Iron Mountain
Ranch, which included School
Section 18, Block 4. The
Marathon townsite was includ-
ed in this section. The original
townsite comprised six blocks
running east and west and six
blocks north and south, divided
in the center by the railroad
tracks.
At the time Haymond was
the largest settlement in the
area, boasting a full railroad
depot and a 24-hour telegraph
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2012
service. At Marathon, train
business was conducted out of
a lowly railroad car. But the
advent of the railroad enabled
a handful of ranching pioneers
to begin shipping their stock
both into and out of the Big
Bend, and Marathon soon
showed the first stirrings of
commercial enterprise. With
an influx of sheep, goat and
cattle ranching, merchants
soon began to bring their enter-
prises to the area, and
Marathon’s strong water sup-
ply and advantageous location
became increasingly attractive
to settlers and entrepreneurs.
On Sept. 23, 1882 Capt.
Shepard officially requested a
post office be established at
Marathon. In his application
he told First Assistant Post
Master Frank Hatton of
Washington, D.C. that the pop-
ulation of the immediate area
was “one hundred thirty and
increasing rapidly,” though the
town itself was estimated at a
mere 50 souls. There were six
businesses in Marathon at the
time: four livestock breeders,
one saloon and one sheep
breeder, Shepard himself.
Nevertheless, the post office
was established in 1883, and
Shepard was named the first
postmaster, a post at which he
served until 1887.
Capt. Shepard signed a
quit-claim deed for the
Marathon townsite to his son
Ben Shepard on Dec. 1, 1885,
for the sum of $5. After platting
the townsite, Ben Shepard
began to sell the lots. The first
recorded lot sale in the town
was to Otto Peterles in March
of 1886. Peterles paid $50 to
Ben Shepard for the lot now
occupied by the Gage Hotel.
There is an interesting
clause in the quit-claim deed
for this sale which appears in
other lot sales by Ben Shepard
as well. It states: