National Register Listing

Thurber Historic District

S of Thurber, Thurber, TX

The town of Thurber, Texas was unique in many ways. Born in response to transportation's need for coal and paving brick, it grew to 10,000 inhabitants by 1921 only to shrink to a handful in the 1930s after railroads switched to oil and highways to asphalt. It is remarkable because the town's entire physical fabric was built before a population existed to occupy it. And, because the democratic government never existed in this entire company- owned and built town, when innovations came, Thurber was the first to have them. It was the first all-union city in the nation and one of the first all-electrified to have complete water and sewage systems. Fed by the company's huge coal and brick industries and a company policy of importing labor, the citizenry was a "melting pot" in a microcosm, boasting immigrants of 18 nationalities.

70 miles west of Fort Worth on IH-20, Thurber began as a coal-mining camp called "Johnson Mines" in 1866. That is the year William Whipple Johnson and his brother Harvey sank their first shaft 150 ft. into Vein #1 of the Strawn Division, the only bituminous coal seam in lignite-rich Texas. Johnson discovered the coal deposits while working for the Texas and Pacific Railroad, whose westward push prompted a reward for anyone locating a coal mine near their lines. At least four others tried unsuccessfully to meet the demand before the Johnsons managed to work two shafts for two years at a time when no coal was being mined in the state.

By 1888, the miners, encouraged by the Knights of Labor, demanded higher wages. His interest waning after the death of his brother, Johnson chose to close the mines rather than risk operating at a loss. Expecting the inevitable re-opening of the mines, the miners camped just off company land in what would come to be known as "Strike Town", or "Grant Town".

Three Eastern capitalists, Col. R.D. Hunter, Edgar t. Marston, and M.K. Thurber, formed the Texas and Pacific Coal Mining Company in November 1888 with the sole intention of buying Mr. Johnson's mines, including the purchase of the entire 2302-1/2 acres of northeastern Erath county known as the Pedro Herrerra tract. Although no corporate connection existed, the name of the company was chosen to flatter the railroad that had agreed to purchase 100% of the coal mined. The town was named for Mr. Thurber, but it was Col. Hunter who was to be the driving force in the company and the town. Hunter offered lower wages than Johnson's and the miners refused, declaring themselves on strike with a company that had never hired them. Never seeing a place for organized labor in his town, Hunter declared "I'll run my business, and I'll run my town, or I'll run it to Hell". He built a four-strand barbed wire fence around 900 acres, including the town. With armed guards posted at the gates, he prevented union "agitators" and peddlers from disrupting either his employees or his monopoly on commercial sales to them. He shipped in trainloads of miners from other areas of the country but only a group of 500 to 600 blacks would cross the strikers' lines and work the mines. Continuing to work the mines, Hunter set about the building of business and residential districts in preparation for the inevitable boom he anticipated when the "strike" was over.

During 1888 and 1889 he spent $56,494.94 building stores, a boarding house, offices, stables, churches, schoolhouses, and over 200 two, three, four, and five-room houses. His actions set the trend for the unique future of Thurber. Only in a completely monopolized atmosphere could the physical structure of a town be built before the communal structure came to occupy it. Even before it was a town, Thurber existed as a response to the railroad's insatiable appetite for coal.

The miners eventually reached an agreement with Hunter in July 1899, and mining commenced in earnest. Mining was by the "long wall advancing" method in which four or more large tunnels would start out like spokes from the "hub" or shaft linking the mine with the surface. Between these shafts were formed the miner's low tunnels through which they brought coal back to the mule carts in the larger tunnels. As the miners extracted coal, their tunnels would move away from the hub, forming a concentric circle of long walls of coal until about 640 acres had been covered, all these hundreds of feet below the surface. By 1896, 1000 to 1500 miners were removed between 1500 and 2000 tons of bitum daily. With the addition of the largest brick plant west of the Mississippi River in 1897, Thurber's future seemed secure and Hunter was able to take advantage of both the high-grade brick shale on company land and the undersized coal for which the miners were not paid.

Thurber bricks were made mostly by the "stiff-mud" process where moist clay is extruded under pressure in a continuous column which is then sliced up in brick-sized units, dried, and fired in kilns. Thurber had at least 17 large rectangular kilns; 8 updrafts and 9 downdrafts. All produced vitrified, top quality, maroon colored brick by the thousands. The plant was closed in 1933 when asphalt finally replaced brick as a paving material and the owners found no reason to try competing in the already sagging building brick market. After the sale to salvagers in 1936, the kilns were dynamited and mostly removed but immense foundation rubble still clearly marks the outline of kilns and buildings.

The town lacked nothing. Due to its remoteness from other American coal mining communities and its difficult, narrow 27" coal seams, Hunter was obliged to make Thurber as attractive and self-reliant as possible over the first few years. This caused the building of a 17-ton ice plant in 1896, a meat packing plant, an electric plant in 1895 (making Thurber one of the first cities in Texas to have electricity in every house), a dairy and herds, a drug store, smelter, mortuary, gin, the only public library in the county, and a 655 seat opera house playing host to top roadshows with steam heat and electric lights by 1900. No employee of the company was allowed ownership of any property or building. Texas Pacific owned everything. Hotel Knox, with room for 200 boarders, was billed as the best hotel between Fort Worth and El Paso. The high school had 15 teachers. Of the two saloons, the "Snake" and the "Lizard", the latter boasted room for 1200 miners with 100 at the horseshoe bar.

Hunter's policy of importing miners included sending recruiters to Europe. As a result, Thurber became a clearing house for the immigration and nationalization of people of at least 18 different nationalities, although Italian and Polish predominated. With only four levels of rent and absolutely no private ownership, the population was distributed according to economic strata rather than strictly ethnic. But among those areas of town, nationalities tended to aggregate, in "Italian Hill", "Polander Hill" and "New York Hill". Hunter passed the reigns to W.K. Gordon in 1899 and Gordon ran the town until he moved to Fort Worth in 1920. Under his management, Thurber supplied half the coal mined in Texas and became totally union in 1903; the first town to have every person drawing a paycheck paying dues to their respective union. John L. Lewis, the great organizer, was called to town to help settle disputes on occasion, as was Texas Ranger John Sullivan. Another famous visitor to Thurber was Eugene C. Debbs, a four-time Socialist presidential candidate who came to address the miners.

In 1917, when T.P. had 2500 men employed in coal mining alone, W.K. Gordon's persistence in drilling resulted in the discovery of the great Ranger oilfields. The discovery of a wealth of oil and gas on company land saved the company from financial ruin, but ultimately sealed the fate of Thurber. Texas Pacific Coal Co. stock went from $100 a share to $1900 a share after recapitalization and incorporation as the Texas Pacific 011 Company in April of 1918. T.P. brought in hundreds of new employees and executives for oil operations. Many were from the Northeast, so when the first 31 fine brick homes were built at a cost of $250,000 in 1918, the subdivision came to be known as "New York Hill". The Ranger field was producing over $100 million a year by 1920 and Thurber's population had swollen to at least 10,000. The town had grown up as a mining camp, but it boomed on Ranger oil. In 1920 the railroads, which used 90% of Thurber's annual production of 700,000 tons of coal, switched to oil-fired locomotives. The miners and the company couldn't reach an agreement on wages and the mines were closed in 1921. "Grant Town" bloomed again with rows of tents as miners awaited the re-opening, but coal mining in Thurber was over with an estimated 137,000,000 tons still to be mined. The population dropped rapidly until it stabilized with about 800 oil and brick plant-related employees in 1926. The company then systematically set about the sale and dismantling of the hundreds of vacant houses and unwanted equipment. Utility lines, water, and sewage lines, and even plants and trees were sold to the highest bidders. All above-ground equipment was sold, but only a couple of mine shafts were stripped, leaving the rest of the 15 total virtually untouched. Even the waste heaps were sold.

In 1933, another change in transportation, from brick to asphaltic road surfacing, caused the closure of the brick plant which had so carefully specialized in the manufacture of high-grade paving brick. Thurber's streets were never paved, but Thurber brick was used by the millions all over Texas and neighboring states from streets in the capital city of Austin to the building of Fort Worth stockyards. Also in 1933, the mercantile store closed and T.P. moved all offices and executives to Fort Worth. Although company land around Thurber had reached 71,000 acres, the town's population was only a handful in the late 1930s. Ex-residents, many of whom still return for annual reunions, viewed the dynamiting and salvage of the 160 ft. brick plant smokestack in 1937 as the ultimate death knell of Thurber. It proved the company's ability to completely wipe away the physical remains of an entire community.

Although company-owned and therefore never incorporated, Thurber once boasted the largest population between Fort Worth and El Paso. It had the reputation of being a "tough town" but its residents remember it as harmonious and as being fascinating to live with so many different cultures in an atmosphere where they could express their heritage, if not govern their own community. The immense cemetery draws many visitors and some ex- Thurberites still have their remains sent there for burial. Both are evidence of the strong sense of belonging and origin felt by former residents and their descendants.

Today, only a few buildings and a blanket of foundations mark the site on either side of Interstate 20 which now slices through the community within yards of the once-bustling town square. The finely crafted, 150 ft. tall 1906 brick smokestack of the long-since removed power and ice plant is now a solemn sentinel above the town and its environs.

Texas Pacific, purchased by Seagram's Distilleries in 1963, retained ownership until about 1966 when it was acquired by Mr. Bennett, an officer in the company. Upon his death in the summer of 1978, he passed it to his son Randy Bennett who now lives in the house marked #195 on the 1920 map and manages the "Thurber Ranch" properties. Most existing structures are still in use, including the water filtration plant and the old drug store building with a restaurant on the first floor and a residence on the second floor. The mercantile group and fire station are used principally as storage, but all contribute to the feeling of being in the boom town of 1920, especially for the many ex-Thurberites who reunite there each July 4th. Only two principal residences remain, the already mentioned #195 and one which was originally Mr. Gordon's residence, now used as a guest house. Mr. Bennett intends to maintain the buildings and re-use them as the need arises.

The boundaries for the district were arranged to include and protect the significant above and below-ground structures and archaeological remains.

Local significance of the district:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1979.