Thrift

Thrift was apparently named for the Thrift Waggoner Bank building. The Handbook of Texas says it little resembled its neighbors: the crime and violence that marked the oil cities were absent, and its population stayed small. Thousands had flooded the northeastern corner of the county after the 1918 discovery, and tent cities appeared overnight. Some of those boomtowns had been abandoned by 1930, but Thrift held on. Its post office lasted until 1954. About fifty people lived there at the start of World War II and about twenty by the late 1950s, after which no population figures were reported.

What the plaque says

(Ghost Townsite, 1.25 miles north) "Newtown", or "Thrift", originated about 1919 in the northwestern extension of the Burkburnett Oil Field. Early in its existence it gained prestige by the founding of a bank--the only one in the area at that time. Mostly a tent city, Thrift suffered many fires. One of these, started by lightning striking an oil tank in 1920, caused two deaths and wiped out much of the town. Thrift's Post Office opened in 1925. After the population shrank to 30 in 1929, the bank, a church, school, and store served people living at oil field pump stations; but all of Thrift's buildings are now gone. (1977, 2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 15 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 — 15 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 — 27 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 — 32 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

• Northwest Extension Oilfield — steps away
• Burnett Horse Ranch — 1.0 mi
• Bridgetown — 2.5 mi
• Simon Peter Hawkins — 2.6 mi