Site of Thurber Brick Plant

The plant's last decades followed the pavement market. Tarleton State University's Industrious Historian says Thurber's brickmakers organized in 1903 as Local 153 and stamped a triangle union mark on bricks sent across the state, until Thurber went open shop in 1921. In the 1920s Dallas and Fort Worth bought paving brick by the million. The 1929 crash ended that era, because cities turned to asphalt, which cost less to lay, and the company closed the plant in 1931. The Handbook gives 1930 for the closing, a year earlier than the plaque.

What the plaque says

Site of Thurber Brick Plant Texas and Pacific Coal Company general manager W. K. Gordon, seeing potential in the shale mud found in Thurber, persuaded company president R. D. Hunter to build a brick plant here in 1897. Original machinery included three Ross-Keller brick presses powered by a Corliss steam engine nicknamed "Old Hunter." The operation covered five acres and employed 800 men. Brick manufactured here was used to pave roads throughout Texas, including old Bankhead Highway (US 80), Austin's Congress Avenue, Fort Worth's Camp Bowie Boulevard, and the Galveston Seawall. The plant closed in 1931. (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

• New York Hill — steps away
• St. Barbara's Catholic Church — steps away
• Thurber — 0.2 mi
• Site of Hotel Knox and Thurber Mining Office — 0.3 mi