New York Hill

Thurber was taken apart on a schedule. Tarleton State University's Industrious Historian writes that after the mines and brick plant closed and a fire destroyed much of downtown, the Texas and Pacific Coal Company chose to close the town and salvage all it could. Movable houses, the school's lumber and even the water and gas pipes were sold. The Handbook adds that the company kept the brick plant running until 1930, a general office until 1933 and its commissary stores until 1935. By the late 1930s Thurber was a ghost town.

What the plaque says

New York Hill This area of Thurber developed after 1917, when the Texas and Pacific Coal Company expanded into the burgeoning oil industry following W. K. Gordon's discovery of the Ranger oil field. Renamed in 1918, the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company brought staff for its new oil division to Thurber from New York. Thirty-one houses were built here on New York Hill. Church Street climbed the hill from town, as did sidewalks and brick steps, some of which were still visible decades later. The buildings on the hill were removed in the 1930s when the company town was dismantled. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 25 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

• Site of Thurber Brick Plant — steps away
• St. Barbara's Catholic Church — steps away
• Thurber — 0.2 mi
• Site of Hotel Knox and Thurber Mining Office — 0.2 mi