monarchy collapsed and he was exe-
cuted in 1867.
This is the world into which Tomas
Aguilar was born. Tomas’s mother
died in 1859, when he was three years
old. His father was in the Mexican
Army during a time of international
upheaval, unable to care for the boy.
He was sent to live with his mother’s
sister and her husband.
Tomas’s aunt and uncle brought
him along when they crossed into the
United States at Presidio in 1864. They
moved to Camp Stockton, established
the year Tomas’s mother died. The fort
was commissioned to protect migrating
settlers and the overland mail, which
passed by the abundant Comanche
Springs. Long an important water
source on the Comanche Trail, the
springs were a point of contention
between settlers and Natives.
By the age of 14, as Ulysses S Grant
was finally readmitting Texas to the
Union after the Civil War, Tomas was
working as a farrier for the U.S. gov-
ernment, shoeing horses and mules for
the wagon teams. As he grew and
worked in the tiny town he learned all
the trades a young man needed to get
by on the frontier: carpentry, cultiva-
tion, and especially blacksmithing. He
met Felipa Sosa and married her in
Fort Stockton in 1876, as the
Comanches, Cheyenne and Kiowa
were losing the Red River War and
being moved to reservations in
Oklahoma, leaving Texas wide open
for the long trail drives of cattle.
In the mid-1880s, the cattle industry
was weathering blow after blow. Fort
Davis was decommissioned as there
were fewer and fewer conflicts with the
Natives. Barbed wire had patchworked
the West since the end of the Fence
Cutting War in 1883, when ranchers
were required to install gates in their
fenced range every three miles to allow
access to water for landless ranchers.
The Great Die-Up of 1886, when two
years of devastating blizzards wreaked
havoc on grazing cattle who could not
escape the cold due to the new barbed-
Upon their arrival in Marathon,
Tomas and Felipa set themselves up in
the shade of a spreading tree. They
pitched a tent for their home, and
Tomas plied his trade as a blacksmith
out in the open air. According to
Wedin, he also made mesquite char-
Tomas Aguilar’s legacy today.
wire fencing, prompted changes in the
economy of West Texas. Tomas took
his young family south to Terlingua
and the booming quicksilver mines,
where they remained until 1896.
That was the year the Aguilars
moved to Marathon. When they
arrived, there was little more than rail-
road section housing, according to
AnneJo P. Wedin’s The Magnificent
Marathon Basin.The Aguilars arrived
just ten years after Otto Peterles and
Frank Aston surveyed and platted the
town, and the first lot, where the Gage
Hotel now stands, was sold.
Mexican
and
American
Food
coal in a kiln and lime by calcining
limestone from the nearby hills.
Slowly and steadily, Tomas built his
business and his reputation as a black-
smith. When their home was built, it
was one of the first non-railroad resi-
dences in Marathon. Their family set-
tled in as the century ticked over; they
worked hard as a gusher in Beaumont
called Spindletop changed the world
and ushered in a Black Gold rush in
1901; they struggled as the first military
air flight happened in San Antonio, in
1910; the family grew as President Taft
sent 20,000 troops to the border to
H AMMERFEST F ORGE
M ETALWORK S TUDIO
quell raids in 1911, as the Mexican
Revolution raged just to the south, in
Tomas’s birthplace; and by 1919,
Tomas was buying one of the first auto-
mobiles in Marathon: a Model T Ford.
He ran his blacksmith shop, a large
adobe building whose dirt floor was
covered by the tools of his trade, until
the early 1930s. Apart from forging
metal and repairing wagons, Tomas
was called upon to make caskets when-
ever the need arose in the little town.
His were not the only blacksmithing
services in Marathon. John Marshall,
J.T. Hill, O.W. Bennett and William
Rogers were others who provided the
same services. But Tomas’s shop was
the first and lasted longest. Out in the
flats of Beakley draw, known to locals
as “the village green,” it stood for a
time adjacent to Marshall’s. One of
Marathon’s periodic floods wiped out
most of the buildings in Beakley draw,
including Marshall’s shop, but Tomas’s
was able to be repaired.
When he retired, in his seventies, it
was the depths of the Great
Depression. He lived another ten years,
surrounded by children and grandchil-
dren, watching his family multiply. His
name was a pioneer name in the tiny
town on the northern reaches of the
desert.
In Marathon today, and all through-
out the Big Bend, the Aguilar family
tree continues to flourish, its roots
reaching down to the very beginning of
settlement in this region, its branches
continuing to spread. Tomas Aguilar
died on January 29, 1944, at the age of
88. He is buried in the Marathon
Cemetery. His great-great grandchil-
dren are parents, business owners,
churchgoers, and pillars of the Big
Bend community.
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432.229.4409
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