Site of Hotel Knox and Thurber Mining Office

Gordon came to Thurber by surveying a railroad. The Handbook of Texas says William Knox Gordon, a Virginia-born surveyor, moved to Texas in 1889 to survey a Dublin to Thurber route, and Robert Dickie Hunter hired him as engineer though he had no mining experience. Gordon patented mine improvements and became manager in 1899. After many failed wells, oil near Strawn in January 1915 won him approval to keep drilling over trained geologists' objections, and the Ranger field followed in October 1917. He retired in the early 1920s and chaired the company's board from 1934 until 1949.

What the plaque says

Site of Hotel Knox and Thurber Mining Office The Texas and Pacific Coal Company built the first-class Hotel Knox about 1895. In addition to serving out-of-town guests, it was a social center in Thurber and home to many of the town's white collar workers, including store clerks and staff of the adjacent mining office where general manager William Knox Gordon maintained his headquarters. The Hotel Knox burned in 1907 and was replaced by the Plummer Hotel. Although the town was dismantled in the 1930s, ruins of the mining office were still visible decades later. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 24 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 30 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.

More markers nearby

• Thurber — steps away
• New York Hill — 0.2 mi
• St. Barbara's Catholic Church — 0.2 mi
• Site of Thurber Brick Plant — 0.3 mi