Thurber, Texas - population about 10 - is considered to
be Texas' premier ghost town. Here's why: barely 100
years ago, Thurber used to have 9,000 residents.
Today, it's merely a pit stop on Interstate 20.

Thurber began as a company-owned town. The Texas
and Pacific railroad owned the mineral rights to the
vast (and only) bituminous coal deposits in Texas, and
lured thousands of skilled coal miners from the north
and from Europe to get it out. Setting up a small
settlement ringed by  tree-covered hilltops, Thurber,
which was named after one of the majority
shareholders in the company, quickly grew as
businesses set up shop. One of the more prosperous
secondary operations in Thurber was its brick works.
Today, crazy people like me go all aflutter upon finding
Thurber bricks embedded in buildings and sidewalks.

Italians, Polish, Germans, and Irish immigrants soon
called Thurber home. Being a company-owned town,
the workers found that they did not have much say in
the way they were (mis)treated, and made their
discontent known through several strikes. From 1900
to ca. 1925, America had experienced many mining
strikes, some ending violently such as the one in
Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914. The miners in Thurber
became the first and only Texas miners to unionize,
and discovered Texas to be an anti-union state.
However, Thurber managed to become the first
all-Union (and the same Union) town inside a
company-owned town in the United States.

As coal-burning locomotives gave way to diesel
engines, and workers remained unsettled, the Texas
and Pacific Railroad Company closed shop. Though
vast amounts of coal still lay undisturbed around
Thurber, the discovery of oil not far away in Ranger,
Cisco, Mingus, and Gordon spelled doom for the coal
works. The coal miners left, too, moving to more
friendly environments. The Thurber brick works quickly
succumbed as well, and Texas and Pacific wasted no
time in dismantling most of the town and selling it for
scraps.

Today, Thurber boasts some scenic ruins, a very
interesting, international graveyard, two restaurants
(one inside the old ice house), and an Industrial
Museum. And that's about it. So the next time you find
yourself just east of Abilene, or west of Fort Worth, on
windy Interstate 20, stop by in Thurber and visit with its
ghosts.
Coal Miner's Town
My son David looks for rocks in front of the smokestack, one of the only
remaining structures that indicate a town used to be here.
An old mine shaft (?) near Mingus
Thurber brick line the forgotten sidewalk next to Altus (Oklahoma) old train depot.
Ruins of the old brick works
Thurber lies on Interstate 20 between Fort
Worth and Abilene. You can't miss it, as the
coal mine's chimney sits right beside the
highway. To see for yourself, click on the map.