Marathon, Texas

Camp Peña Colorado, originally known as Cantonment Peña Colorado, was a post of the United States Army for almost fifteen years in the late 1800s. It was located about four miles southwest of the site of present-day Marathon in north central Brewster County. The post was built on Peña Colorada Creek near a large spring and beneath a high bluff called Peña Colorada (Spanish for "red rock," known also in English as Rainbow Cliffs), after which the creek, spring, and the army post itself were named (though the namers were not fastidious about Spanish grammatical gender). Indians had apparently occupied the area around Peña Colorada Springs for thousands of years. In historical times the site had been a major stopping place on the Comanche Trail to Mexico. It was first occupied by United States soldiers in late August 1879, when Companies F and G, Twenty-fifth United States Infantry Regiment, moved there from Fort Stockton. The location lay on the road connecting Fort Clark and Fort Davis, was also on the prospective southern route of the transcontinental railroad, and was within practicable supporting distance of Fort Stockton to the northeast and Fort Davis to the northwest. The establishment of Camp Peña Colorado was likely part of a larger army strategy to increase pressure on the Apaches living in the Trans-Pecos region, who were still forcefully resisting White settlement. It is probably not coincidence, either, that the outpost was founded the same month that Victorio and his Warm Springs Apaches escaped confinement on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico and began their flight across the Southwest and Trans-Pecos. The primary mission of the garrison at Camp Peña Colorado, as it turned out, was to provide escort through the region, perform scout duty, and pursue bandits, border raiders, horse thieves, and the like. In July 1880 the garrison was relieved by two companies of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry . In September Company K, First Infantry, assumed garrison duties. This company, by monthly reports, indicated its chief occupations as road building and escort duty; it remained at the post for four years. During this time the spartan post consisted of several crude huts made of stone and mud and included two long, narrow buildings, one to serve as enlisted men's barracks and the other as a storehouse. Other buildings included two smaller huts for officers' quarters and a stone granary. The coming of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1882 just to the north, however, brought material refinement in living conditions at the post with the increased availability of commodities from the East. After July 1884 the garrison was principally composed of units of the Tenth United States Cavalry . The cavalry was needed for scouting missions and inspection of the Mexican border for Apaches and bandits. The Third Cavalry replaced the Tenth in the summer of 1885, when Geronimo and his band were causing trouble in Arizona and New Mexico. Units of the Third Cavalry made up the garrison until relieved by a temporary detachment of the Eighteenth Infantry. Camp Peña Colorado was finally abandoned in late January 1893. By that time the settling of the country around the post was well along, and the need for United States Army troops in the Big Bend had shifted closer to the border. The site of the camp is located on Post Ranch, part of the Combs Cattle Company. The company's founder, David St. Clair Combs , early trail driver and prominent Texas rancher, donated the land around Peña Colorada Springs for a park in 1935. A historical marker was erected the next year on the location of the former outpost. The park is still enjoyed by residents of the area, among whom the spot is commonly known simply as the Post.

David St. Clair Combs was born on May 26, 1839, in Johnson County, Missouri, the son of David and Rebecca (Burruss) Combs. In 1854 the family moved to Texas and settled near San Marcos, then a frontier town. In August 1861 at La Grange, Fayette County, Combs enlisted in Company D of the Eighth Texas Cavalry , better known as Terry's Texas Rangers. He fought in all major engagements in which the rangers participated through Chickamauga. While he was on furlough in Texas, he was transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Department, where he served to the end of the war. He fought in the battle of Palmito Ranch on May 13, 1865, the last engagement of the Civil War . After the war Combs was one of the first traildrivers; from 1866 to 1879 he drove cattle and horses to Louisiana, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. In 1880 he and his partners ranched near San Angelo, but in 1882 they moved ranching operations to Brewster County. In 1900 he established Combs Ranch, one of the largest ranches in Brewster County, near Marathon. As one of the last surviving members of the Eighth Texas Cavalry, Combs was instrumental in getting L. B. Giles to write his history of the regiment, Terry's Texas Rangers (1967); Combs's letter is the preface. Combs married Eleanora Browning on February 27, 1873, and they had two daughters and a son. Combs died on January 3, 1926, in San Antonio and was buried in San Marcos.

Alfred Stevens Gage, businessman and founder of the A. S. Gage Ranches , was born in Townshend, Vermont, on February 8, 1860, the son of Newton and Olivia (Arnold) Gage. He was raised in Ascutneyville, Vermont, and his interest in Texas was supposedly inspired by the letters of his older half-brother, Edward L. Gage, a Dartmouth College graduate who had established a land-locating business in Dallas in partnership with E. M. Powell. After graduating from high school in Windsor, Vermont, in 1878, Alfred came to Texas for the first time. He resided briefly in Dallas with Edward before going to work on a ranch in Shackelford County for twelve dollars a month. He then bought a small ranch of his own on the Little Wichita River in Archer County. In 1882, when he lost his forty cattle to rustlers, he sold out and moved to the Big Bend to manage his half-brother's ranching operation in what was then Presidio County, where Edward had been accumulating railroad land for several years. Alfred later recalled that during his ride to Marathon he offered to pay the various families with whom he stayed along the way, but no one had change for the twenty-dollar gold piece that represented his entire fortune, so he arrived in Marathon as wealthy as when he set out. Alfred became manager of Edward's Presidio Live Stock Company, and after his half-brother's suicide in 1892 continued as manager of the Alpine Cattle Company while acquiring substantial holdings of his own. In 1913 he bought out the other stockholders in the Alpine Cattle Company and merged it with his own operation. Gage moved to San Antonio in the early twentieth century and became a business leader there. He was for many years the president of the San Antonio Water Supply Company and was also a vice president of the Lockwood National Bank, a member of the Frost Bank board of directors, and president of the San Antonio Country Club. He was a member of the Texas Cattle Raisers Association ( see TEXAS AND SOUTHWESTERN CATTLE RAISERS ASSOCIATION ) and the Highland Hereford Association. He maintained his interest in his holdings in the Trans-Pecos and in 1927 built the Gage Hotel in Marathon, at least in part so he would be assured of comfortable lodgings when he traveled to Brewster County. He married Ida Swan, a native of Illinois who first went to Brewster County to visit her uncle, a local rancher. The couple had two daughters before Ida's death in 1924. Gage married again. He died in San Antonio on June 23, 1928, after surgery for appendicitis. Among the pallbearers at his funeral were Gustav Groos , Herbert L. Kokernot , Charles Schreiner , and William W. Turney . Gage's daughters, Dorothy and Roxana, inherited his holdings, which at the time of his death totaled some 500,000 acres.

Fort Pena Colorada, the last active fort in this area, on the old Comanche Trail, about 4 miles to the southwest was established in 1879. Marathon was founded in 1881. Named by an old sea captain, A.E. Shepard, for the Plain of Marathon, in Greece, of which the hills here reminded him. Cradle of West Texas cattle industry. Among the first noted ranchers here were Mayer M. Halff and brother, owners of the famous Circle Dot brand. Original gateway to the Big Bend National Park. (1964)

Marathon was named by a railroad surveyor who thought the surrounding landscape resembled Marathon, Greece, and became the northern gateway to Big Bend.

In 1883, completion occurred of the extension of tracks by the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway (G.H. & S.A. Ry.) Line located between El Paso and San Antonio. Retired sea captain Albion E. Shepard arrived in the region as a railroad surveyor. He acquired much land in the area, including Section 18, Block 4 of the G.H. & S.A. Railway survey. Tradition documents the naming of Marathon to Captain Shepard’s observations of the similarity of the valley and its encircling hills to Marathon, Greece, where the mountains meet the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. At this site, Captain Shepard applied for a post office in September 1882 where he became the first postmaster. He deeded Section 18 to his son Ben Shepard for the creation of the Marathon townsite on December 6, 1885 on an existing siding of the railroad. Captain Shepard established “Iron Mountain Ranch” on 58 sections of ranchland bought from F. W. Folts on March 10, 1882, located in the Glass Mountains along the north line of the Marathon Basin. The ranch was stocked with as many as 25,000 sheep, managed by herders with no fences. Prior to 1887, Shepard built a large two-story adobe home facing Marathon’s public square located at North Avenue “D” and North Second Street. The square plan Colonial Revival home contains four large rooms on each floor and features a hipped roof and full-length double gallery with square porch supports. An original carriage house is also part of the historic homestead. Adobe blocks were made locally, while lumber and furnishings were delivered by rail. The house was later acquired by the Hess family, owners of a mercantile and hardware store and ranching neighbors of Shepard. The house, which remained in the Hess family until the 1980s, evokes the ranching and civic contributions of pioneer settlers of the community. Recorded Texas Historical Landmark – 2013