Site of Thurber Brick Plant

🏛️The era

In the late nineteenth century, Thurber was one of the most unusual places in Texas: a company town. The Texas and Pacific Coal Company owned the town, dug coal to fuel the railroads, and housed, supplied, and employed a large workforce, many of them immigrants. Coal made Thurber, but the ground here held other resources too.

The 1890s and early 1900s were a time of rapid growth for Texas cities and for road building. Muddy streets were becoming a problem as towns grew, and the rise of the automobile in the early twentieth century made durable pavement essential. Brick was one of the best paving materials available, and demand for it boomed.

The Thurber brick plant's working life, from 1897 to 1931, covers that whole arc, from horse-and-wagon towns to highways crossing the state. Its closing at the start of the Great Depression came as Thurber itself was fading, and the company town soon emptied out.

👥People & events

The brick plant began with one man noticing something in the mud. W. K. Gordon, general manager of the Texas and Pacific Coal Company, saw promise in the shale clay around Thurber. He persuaded the company's president, R. D. Hunter, to invest in a brick plant, and in 1897 it opened.

The machinery was impressive for its day. Three Ross-Keller brick presses were driven by a Corliss steam engine, and workers named that engine Old Hunter, after the company president. It was a mix of affection and humour you might expect in a company town, where the boss's name was on everything.

The plant grew to cover five acres and employed about 800 men, a large industrial workforce for rural Texas. Its bricks left Thurber by rail and ended up in some of the best-known roads in the state: the old Bankhead Highway, Congress Avenue in Austin, Camp Bowie Boulevard in Fort Worth, and even the Galveston Seawall.

The plant ran until 1931. When it closed, a large part of Thurber's reason to exist disappeared with it.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Across the United States in the early twentieth century, Americans pulled their towns out of the mud. Paved streets and highways changed how people traveled, did business, and lived. Much of that paving work depended on industrial plants like this one, making durable brick in enormous quantities.

Thurber's bricks became part of that national story. The Bankhead Highway was one of the country's early long-distance auto routes. Streets like Congress Avenue and Camp Bowie Boulevard became symbols of their cities. Some of that brick is still visible in places today, a century after it was pressed here.

The plant also shows what company towns were. These communities were built entirely around one employer's resources and decisions, and when the resource or the market ran out, the town often disappeared. Thurber's rise and fall is one of the clearest examples in Texas.

🧭If you visit

Thurber sits just off the interstate between Fort Worth and Abilene. Today it is mostly a ghost town, so the marker helps you picture something that is largely gone: a five-acre works full of steam, presses, and hundreds of workers.

Look around at the land and imagine the noise and smoke of a working plant. Then think about the roads you may be driving later on this trip. If you walk Congress Avenue in Austin or cruise Camp Bowie Boulevard in Fort Worth, you are connected to this spot.

Thurber is a rewarding stop for anyone interested in industrial history or in the stories of Texas ghost towns. Take your time, read the other markers in the area, and let the quiet of the place remind you how busy it once was.