World War I Peace Monument
Water Valley, Tom Green County, Texas
Marker Inscription
At the close of "The Great War," the citizens of Water Valley wanted to honor those of their community who had served overseas. They were inspired by a small family monument erected on the eastern ridge of Mount McLaughlin in 1902. On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, at least ten men and a burro named "Come On" climbed the 2,410-foot rise of Mount McLaughlin two miles south of this site. They built five tiers of native fieldstone on the western end of the peak. Designed by local mason Harry Howard, the monument stands twenty-two feet high and measures eight feet wide at its base. It bears the names of the Water Valley men who served in World War I: Herschel Ditmore, John Gillespie, Webb Gillespie, Earl Hanson, Chester Harden, Mark Harden, Ollie McCrary, John Runnels, Boone Rainey, Ulysis Rainey, J. H. Ruth, and Mark Trotter. Important facts about the war also are listed. The builders of this monument were Frank Demere, George Demere, Houston Ditmore, Harve Earnest, Will Garner, Pablo Garza, Harry Howard, S. L. Tate, Stanley Turner, and R. R. Wade. The monument continues to honor the heroes of Water Valley. Four of the veterans and five of the builders are interred in the Water Valley Cemetery. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
To honor the men of Water Valley who served in the Great War, a group of townspeople—and a burro named 'Come On'—climbed Mount McLaughlin on Armistice Day 1918 and stacked five tiers of native fieldstone into a twenty-two-foot monument. Designed by local mason Harry Howard, it bears the names of a dozen local servicemen alongside facts about the war. Several of the veterans and builders now rest in the nearby Water Valley Cemetery.
Why it matters
Community-built war memorials like this one show how small towns across America chose to remember their World War I soldiers with their own hands.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The end of the First World War landed on the world with a suddenness that is hard to imagine now. For more than four years, the conflict Americans called the Great War had drawn young men from farms and small towns across the country into a struggle on the far side of the ocean. When the fighting stopped, communities everywhere reached for ways to mark both their grief and their relief.
In Water Valley, out in the ranch country of Tom Green County, the impulse took a very local and very physical form. This is West Texas high ground, where the land rises in ridges and the horizon runs a long way, and the townspeople looked to their own landscape for a way to honor the men who had gone to serve. They found inspiration close to home, in a small family monument that had stood on a nearby ridge since 1902.
What they resolved to build was not commissioned from a distant firm or ordered from a catalog. It was to be made by their own hands, from the stone under their feet, on a peak that belonged to their own country. In an age of official memorials cast in bronze, Water Valley chose something older and more personal.
People & events
On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, the very day the guns fell silent in Europe, at least ten men and a burro named Come On made the climb up the 2,410-foot rise of Mount McLaughlin, about two miles south of where the marker now stands. The timing is the heart of the story. As the world exhaled, these neighbors were already at work turning relief into something permanent.
On the western end of the peak they built five tiers of native fieldstone, a monument designed by local mason Harry Howard that rose twenty-two feet high and measured eight feet across at its base. Into it they set the names of the Water Valley men who had served in the war, a dozen of them, from the Gillespies and the Hardens to the Rainey brothers and the rest. Facts about the war itself were recorded there too, so that those who came later would understand what the names had lived through.
The monument was raised by a crew of townsmen, Frank and George Demere, Houston Ditmore, Harve Earnest, Will Garner, Pablo Garza, Harry Howard, S. L. Tate, Stanley Turner, and R. R. Wade, ordinary men doing extraordinary manual work on a mountaintop. This was a monument to those who served and came back, not only to the fallen, and in time four of the honored veterans and five of the builders were laid to rest in the Water Valley Cemetery.
Its place in the American story
In the years after the First World War, nearly every American community built something to remember its soldiers, and those memorials became one of the most widespread acts of collective grief and pride the nation has ever undertaken. The Water Valley monument belongs to that great wave, but it stands out for how it was made, not purchased or dedicated by officials but stacked stone by stone by the townspeople themselves.
That hands-on quality is what makes it nationally meaningful. It shows how small towns across America chose to remember their World War I soldiers with their own labor, on their own land, rather than waiting for someone else to do the remembering for them. The effort of hauling fieldstone up a mountain says as much about the community's feeling as any inscription could.
There is something enduring in the choice of a mountaintop, too. A monument raised that high, in that lonely place, was meant to last and to be seen, a permanent statement that these particular men mattered to the people who knew them. It turned a West Texas peak into a piece of the country's shared memory of the war.
If you visit
Water Valley is a small community in Tom Green County, and the marker sits about two miles north of Mount McLaughlin, the peak that carries the monument itself. From the marker, look south toward the rise and picture the climb the builders made on that Armistice Day in 1918, hauling stone up more than two thousand feet with a patient burro named Come On.
The marker names names, and that is where to linger. Read the dozen servicemen and the ten builders slowly, and remember that these were neighbors, that several of them lie today in the nearby Water Valley Cemetery. A stop at that cemetery can round out the visit, letting you stand near the very people who did the honoring and the ones they honored.
Because the monument sits on a summit at a distance, treat this as a place to take in the landscape and the story rather than to rush. Ask locally if you want to know more about the peak, and above all give yourself a quiet moment on the high plains. The point of the place is the human effort behind it, and that comes through best when you slow down to feel the scale of what a small town built by hand.
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
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