Thursday, June 15, 2000

History center setting up in ghost town
By Bill Whitaker

It’s hard to say what folks in the Thurber Historical Society are more excited about these days — return of the ghost town’s old, decrepit bandstand or construction of a new historical center.

Certainly, 89-year-old Lillie Gibson, matriarch of efforts to memorialize the once-booming coal town, was thrilled about the bandstand when she and other “Thuberites” gathered last weekend at the old town site, halfway between Abilene and Fort Worth along Interstate 20.

She’s been coveting that 85-year-old bandstand almost 20 years now — ever since she spotted it near the little Erath County community of Duffau, where somebody had long ago moved it.

“Of course, the first time I spotted it, there were 10 hound dogs tied to it and some coon-hunters inside,” she said. “And, I thought, ‘Oh, goodness, I’ll never get that thing back to Thurber.’ But my husband Everett knew what I was thinking.

“He said, ‘Lillie, you’re going to find a way to get that back to Thurber, aren’t you?’”

Consider it done — almost.

As soon as they find someone to haul it back, the historic bandstand will be one more piece in the puzzle that was Thurber.

That’s why last week’s other news about Thurber was so reassuring. The Tarleton State University Foundation in nearby Stephenville, working with Mrs. W.K. Gordon Jr., daughter-in-law of the long-gone company coal town’s vice president and general manager, has announced construction of the W.K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas.

It, too, has been long in coming.

Thurber bricks

“This is something we’re very excited about,” said Koy Floyd, TSU vice president of institutional advancement. “It’s something that will enrich the cultural and educational atmosphere of Tarleton.”

Financed through a $1.2 million Texas Department of Transportation grant and private funds from the Gordon family, the W.K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas will concentrate on the area’s contributions to the gradual industrialization of Texas through oil, gas, coal, even its famous Thurber bricks.

Planners hope to use age-old Thurber bricks in some of the building’s construction, slated to begin by year’s end.

Thurber has cried out for recognition for years. Although its population — less than a dozen souls today — qualifies it as a ghost town, former coal miners and their descendants have labored long and hard for a history center to pay homage to the old boomtown that 10,000 hardy souls called home at its peak in 1915.

“We want everyone to remember Thurber,” said Gibson, herself a former resident. “It’s one of the most historical places in Texas. It was the first bituminous coal mine in the state, the first town with total electricity and the only totally unionized town in the world. It was even the last place to have a regular stagecoach route.”

Certainly, it was an unusual venture for the time, especially in Texas.

“Every building and inch of ground was owned 100 percent by Texas & Pacific Coal Company,” said Thurber historian Leo Bielinski. “Every resident lived in a company house, shopped at company stores, drank at the company saloon, attended a company school, danced at the company opera house and worshipped in company churches.”

Melting pot

What’s more, Thurber was perhaps the most perfect “melting pot” of ethnic groups ever in Texas, maybe anywhere. The names of old residential sections testify to the immigrants that came to work underground — Italian Hill, Polander Hill, New York Hill. To their credit, the different ethnic groups got along famously.

So what if church priests sometimes heard confessions in six different languages?

Yet, much work remains to be done, including fixing up the handful of historic buildings moved back to the town site in recent years, including an old church. Plus, Gibson says, it’s a challenge keeping up with far-flung descendants of the old mining families, some of whom return for the annual reunion each June.

Just the same, Thurber old-timers — all of whom live elsewhere now — want to see the history center built and a support staff manning it before their days on earth are done and they too move underground.

“You know, Everett and I were just about the last ones to live in Thurber,” Gibson said. “He was a warehouse manager for the T&P Coal & Oil Company till we finally left on the 15th of September in 1935. Nobody was left but us and six families of blacks. They continued to live there, too, and, as they died off, they just buried them southeast of where we gather now.

“Of course, their graves are unmarked and we mean to get them a tombstone,” she said. “But that’s just one more thing that has to be done.”

Contact associate editor Bill Whitaker at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com. Check out Bill’s previous columns at www.brazosbill.com.