Thurber Texas: The Life and Death of a Company Coal Town

The Thurber coal district sprang to life in the late 1880s in northern Erath County, Texas, some seventy miles west of Fort Worth.

The mines were opened by the Texas & Pacific Coal Company to fuel the locomotives of its railway, whose tracks crossed the state from Marshall to El Paso. The company also built the town of Thurber to service the mines. It then imported workers from distant points, eventually including some twenty nationalities, whose old country ways contrasted sharply with neighboring farm life.

John Spratt grew to manhood in Mingus, just three miles north of Thurber during the 1920s. His chronicle of the Thurber district is not only a nostalgic trip back in time but also a case study of the impact of technological change on one part of modern America.

Author: John S. Spratt
Publisher: TX A&m-McWhiney Foundation
Published: 04/04/1986
Pages: 180
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.68lbs
Size: 9.02h x 6.14w x 0.68d
ISBN13: 9781933337005
ISBN10: 1933337001
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States | State & Local | South (AL,AR,FL,GA,KY,LA,MS,
- Technology & Engineering | Mining

About the Author
JOHN S. SPRATT, SR. was a professor of economics at Southern Methodist University. Spratt passed away in 1976.

HARWOOD P. HINTON is professor emeritus of history at the University of Arizona and was one of the senior editors for the Handbook of Texas.

T. LINDSAY BAKER is director of the W. K. Gordon Center for the Industrial History of Texas located in Thurber, Texas.