Site of Thurber Brick Plant
Thurber, Erath County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Texas and Pacific Coal Company general manager W. K. Gordon, seeing potential in the shale mud found in Thurber, persuaded company president R. D. Hunter to build a brick plant here in 1897. Original machinery included three Ross-Keller brick presses powered by a Corliss steam engine nicknamed "Old Hunter." The operation covered five acres and employed 800 men. Brick manufactured here was used to pave roads throughout Texas, including old Bankhead Highway (US 80), Austin's Congress Avenue, Fort Worth's Camp Bowie Boulevard, and the Galveston Seawall. The plant closed in 1931. (1995)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the coal-and-clay company town of Thurber, general manager W. K. Gordon spotted opportunity in the local shale and convinced Texas and Pacific Coal Company to open a brick plant in 1897. Powered by a Corliss steam engine crews called "Old Hunter," the five-acre works employed some 800 men at its peak. Its bricks paved marquee stretches of Texas—Congress Avenue in Austin, Camp Bowie Boulevard in Fort Worth, and even the Galveston Seawall—before the plant fell silent in 1931.
Why it matters
Thurber's bricks literally paved the roads of a modernizing Texas, a reminder of how industrial company towns fed the nation's early-20th-century push to build durable highways and cities.
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Related people
- · W. K. Gordon
- · R. D. Hunter
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Thurber's First Coal Mine
Thurber, TX
Just southeast of this spot, brothers William and Harvey Johnson sank the first coal mine in the area, tapping seams 65 feet down. After Harvey's death and mounting financial trouble, the operation passed to R. D. Hunter's Texas and Pacific Coal Company, which grew the surrounding company town of Thurber into a fully unionized settlement employing some 2,500 miners of eighteen nationalities. Railroads hungry for fuel made the coal valuable, and a landmark 1903 strike cemented the union's hold.
Thurber
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Thurber was Texas' most important coal town for three decades. After coal was 'discovered' here in 1886, the Texas and Pacific Coal Company built a bustling company town of 10,000 people whose mines fueled the state's railroads. Engineer William K. Gordon pushed daily output to 3,000 tons — and in 1917 helped discover the nearby Ranger oil field, an irony that helped doom coal as railroads switched to oil. The last mine closed in 1921 and Thurber emptied, though millions of tons of coal still lie underground.
Home of Stephen Bethel Strawn
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Bankhead Highway through Eastland County
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