Dodson House

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's what you need to know about the Dodson House. Now this is a structure with some genuine West Texas bone to it. Back in 1883, a Confederate veteran and pioneer doctor by the name of J.

C. Cornelius built this place. Think about what that meant for a moment.

There was no lumberyard down the road. No hardware store you could pop into on a Saturday morning. Every bit of material that went into this house had to come by mule train, hauled all the way from the railroad at Colorado City.

Mule train. Every plank, every nail, every piece of what would become a real home, loaded up and dragged across that open country. That's not convenience.

That's commitment. And when Cornelius put this house together, he put it together right. The handmade cabinets are still there.

The front entrance hall is still there. Those two fireplaces, still standing exactly as they were originally built. A doctor who'd lived through the Confederacy and pushed out into this frontier country wasn't building something temporary.

Then comes 1894, and the house passes to the family of A. C. Dodson, a former Tennessee schoolteacher, and it's been in that family ever since.

A schoolteacher's family holding onto a soldier-doctor's house, out on the Texas plains. Some things, once they're built right, just tend to stay.

What the marker says

Built 1883 by a Confederate veteran and pioneer doctor, J. C. Cornelius. Materials came by mule train from railroad at Colorado City. Handmade cabinets, front entrance hall, the 2 fireplaces remain as originally built. Since 1894 owned by family of a former Tennessee schoolteacher, A. C. Dodson. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965