E.M. Hardigree Home
Colorado City, Mitchell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1890 by H.D. Shepperd. Sold, 1899 to Martin Dies, Sr. Birthplace of Martin Dies, Jr., famous U.S. Congressman. Home of colorful early-day ranch couple, G.W. and Alice Garrett Plaster, Mitchell County ranchers for over fifty years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1890 in the young ranching town of Colorado City, this West Texas home later became the birthplace of Martin Dies Jr., the influential congressman who chaired an early House committee investigating un-American activities. It was also home to the colorful ranching couple G. W. and Alice Garrett Plaster, Mitchell County stockraisers for more than half a century. The house links pioneer ranch life to national politics.
Why it matters
It shows how the open-range ranching country of West Texas produced not only cattle fortunes but figures who would shape American political life on the national stage.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1890, Colorado City was one of the liveliest young towns on the West Texas plains. It had grown up only a decade earlier, when the Texas and Pacific Railway pushed west across the rolling grasslands. Almost overnight a scatter of tents and cow camps became a shipping point for a vast cattle country. Cattlemen, cowhands, merchants and newcomers poured in, and the town quickly earned a reputation as a hub of the ranching trade along the upper Colorado River.
The open range was changing fast at the same time. Barbed wire, railroads and settled land ownership were ending the long trail drives. Ranching families began to put down permanent roots, and a well-built house in town said that a family meant to stay. Those roots were the kind that tied the frontier to a settled, prosperous future.
Across the nation, the Gilded Age was a time of railroad expansion, booming industry and restless westward movement. By the turn of the century, the rough cattle towns of Texas were becoming real communities, with churches, schools and families. Some of their sons would go on to careers far beyond the county line.
People & events
The house began with H.D. Shepperd, who built it in 1890 as Colorado City was finding its footing. Within a decade it changed hands: in 1899 it was sold to Martin Dies, Sr., a Texas lawyer and politician who himself went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The home's most famous connection came soon after. Martin Dies, Jr., was born here and followed his father into Congress, where he became one of the best-known congressmen of his generation. He is remembered above all for chairing a special House committee, set up in the late 1930s, to investigate what it called un-American activities. That committee, often called simply the Dies Committee, was a forerunner of the later House Un-American Activities Committee. Its work was controversial in its own day and remains debated by historians.
The house also belonged to a very different kind of story. It was home to G.W. and Alice Garrett Plaster, a ranching couple the marker calls "colorful" early-day residents. They raised livestock in Mitchell County for more than fifty years. Their long partnership stands for the many ranch families whose steady, unglamorous work actually built West Texas, season by season and drought by drought.
Its place in the American story
Few houses link the cattle frontier and the halls of Congress as directly as this one. A home built in a railroad-era ranch town became the starting point for a political family that served in Washington across two generations.
Martin Dies, Jr.'s committee shaped a national argument that ran through the middle of the twentieth century: how a democracy should respond to fears of subversion, and where investigation ends and the violation of civil liberties begins. Americans still argue over that question, and its roots reach back to the committee he chaired.
Meanwhile, the Plasters' half-century on Mitchell County ranchland is a reminder that the American West was built by families as much as by famous names. This single address holds both halves of the story: the quiet endurance of ranch life and the loud, contentious world of national politics.
If you visit
Look at the house with 1890 in mind. It went up when Colorado City was only about a decade old, and it has survived well over a century of West Texas wind, heat and change. The Recorded Texas Historic Landmark designation it received in 1967 recognizes that endurance as well as its famous associations.
Please treat it as a place to view respectfully from public space unless you know it is open to visitors, and do not assume you can go inside. As you look, picture a newborn future congressman and, in another chapter, a ranching couple coming home from long days on the range.
Colorado City makes an easy stop on an Interstate 20 drive across West Texas. Give yourself time to wander the older parts of town, where the railroad-era roots of the ranch country are still easy to feel, and watch for other historical markers nearby that tell more of Mitchell County's story.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Martin Dies, Jr.
- · G. W. Plaster
- · Alice Garrett Plaster
Themes & tags
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