Site of Friberg School

The school that joined Friberg in 1956 came from a colony with its own history. Thornberry, across the line in Clay County, was founded in 1890 by settlers from Illinois and first called the Illinois Colony. It was soon renamed for Amos Thornberry, a leading settler and orchardist who brought large-scale orchard farming to the county. Its post office lasted from 1891 to 1908, and a proposed rail line to Wichita Falls was never finished. Thornberry counted twenty people through the 1930s and 1940s and sixty from the late 1950s to 2000.

What the plaque says

Friberg School was created in 1895 to serve families in this area. By 1896 students attended classes in a granary owned by Will Friberg; the following year John Friberg donated land here and a 2-room schoolhouse was erected. The school also served as a community gathering place, and by 1922 increased enrollment led to the addition of a third room. Upper level students began attending Wichita Falls High School in 1931, and in 1956 Clay County's Thornberry School consolidated with Friberg. After a 1969 fire left only the cafeteria intact, Friberg School closed. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 6.2 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 6.8 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 17 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 20 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Sheppard Air Force Base — 4.1 mi
• Cashion School — 4.3 mi
• Site of St. James Hotel — 6.2 mi
• Joseph Sterling Bridwell — 6.3 mi