Strawn City Hall
Strawn, Palo Pinto County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The city of Strawn, incorporated in 1917, held its first council meeting in a hall at a local bank building. During an oil, gas, and coal inspired economic boom the city's population reached 5,000 in 1920, and in 1921 bonds for a city hall were issued. This handsome classically-inspired local landmark was designed by Abilene architect David S. Castle and built in 1923. It features cast stone detailing in its arched entry, quoins, and parapet, and a decorative brick cornice. (1995)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Strawn incorporated in 1917, this stretch of Palo Pinto County was riding a fossil-fuel boom—oil, gas, and coal all pulling workers into North Texas—and by 1920 the town's population had swelled to around 5,000. Flush with confidence, the young city issued bonds in 1921 for a proper seat of government, and in 1923 it got one: a handsome, classically inspired hall by Abilene architect David S. Castle. Its cast-stone quoins, arched entry, and decorative brick cornice gave a rough-and-tumble boomtown a touch of civic dignity that still stands today.
Why it matters
The building is a durable witness to the early-20th-century energy booms that briefly turned small Texas towns into bustling cities, and to the civic ambition those booms inspired before the crowds moved on.
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Related people
- · David S. Castle
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bethel Strawn
Strawn, TX
Bethel Strawn settled in Palo Pinto County in 1858 and, in 1864, enlisted in the Texas State Troops to guard the frontier against raids while settlers supplied the Confederate cause. When the Texas and Pacific Railroad crossed his land in 1880, the stop took his name, and the town of Strawn soon drew people from older settlements. His name later spread underground, too, attached to the oil-bearing "Strawn" rock formations and the coal once mined nearby.
Thomas House
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Completed in 1919 for rancher Randal Burton Thomas, this Prairie School house — low, horizontal, with wide projecting eaves — was designed by a Dallas architect and built with wealth from the Ranger Oil Boom that began nearby in 1917. The Thomas family had been among the region's earliest settlers after the railroad reached West Texas around 1881, and the house was arranged with separate quarters for Thomas's mother, who had raised him running the family ranch.
Home of Stephen Bethel Strawn
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Tennessee-born Stephen Bethel Strawn came to Palo Pinto County in 1859 as one of its first settlers, married the next year, and served in the state troops guarding the frontier during the Civil War. He built this house in the mid-1870s and in 1880 founded the town of Strawn to entice the Texas & Pacific Railway through the area. A rancher, landowner, banker, and investor in local coal mining, he embodied the many roles a frontier town-founder played.
Mount Marion Cemetery
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This cemetery sits on land once owned by coal operator William W. Johnson—whose mining ventures built up nearby Thurber—and takes its name from his daughter Marion, who died at age three. With its earliest documented burial in 1883, it became the main graveyard for Strawn, holding pioneers, town founder Stephen B. Strawn, former Texas Rangers, veterans from the Civil War through World War II, and victims of the 1918–19 influenza epidemic.