Albion E. Shepard House

In 1883, the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway line was completed between El Paso and San Antonio, and retired sea captain Albion E. Shepard arrived in the region as a railroad surveyor. He acquired extensive land, including Section 18, Block 4 of the G.H. & S.A. Railway survey, and tradition credits his observation of the valley and its encircling hills as resembling Marathon, Greece, with inspiring the name Marathon. At this site, he applied for a post office in September 1882 and became the first postmaster, then deeded Section 18 to his son Ben Shepard on December 6, 1885 for the creation of the Marathon townsite on an existing railroad siding. On March 10, 1882, Captain Shepard bought 58 sections of ranchland from F. W. Folts in the Glass Mountains along the north line of the Marathon Basin and established Iron Mountain Ranch, which was stocked with as many as 25,000 sheep managed by herders without fences. Before 1887, he built a large two-story adobe house facing Marathon's public square at North Avenue D and North Second Street; the Colonial Revival home had four large rooms on each floor, a hipped roof, a full-length double gallery with square porch supports, and an original carriage house. Its adobe blocks were made locally, while lumber and furnishings arrived by rail. The house was later acquired by the Hess family, mercantile and hardware store owners and ranching neighbors of Shepard, and it remained in that family until the 1980s as a reminder of the ranching and civic contributions of the community's pioneer settlers.

Marathon, Texas · United States