Along I-20, about 75 miles west of Ft Worth, there are the remnants of an old Company Town, where the company owned everything and workers and their families had to shop at the company store.  There is a small museum at the site which details some of the history of the area.  It is worth a stop if you are passing by on the highway, and there are 2 restaurants convenient to the museum as well.


A surviving remnant of the industrial complex, a smokestack:




"THURBER, TEXAS. Though it is a ghost town today, Thurber once had a population of perhaps as many as 8,000 to 10,000. At that time (1918–20) it was the principal bituminous-coal-mining town in Texas. The site of the town is seventy-five miles west of Fort Worth in the northwest corner of Erath County. The coal deposits were discovered in the mid-1880s by William Whipple Johnson, then an engineer for the Texas and Pacific Railway. He began mining operations there in December 1886 with Harvey Johnson. Isolation forced the operators to recruit miners from other states and from overseas; large numbers of workers came from Italy, Poland, the United States, Britain, and Ireland, with smaller numbers from Mexico, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, and Russia. Black miners from Indiana worked in the mines during the labor troubles of the 1880s. The force of predominantly foreign workers, many of whom spoke little or no English, enabled the company to maintain a repressive environment for many years. Following inability to meet a payroll and a resulting strike by miners, the Johnsons sold out in the fall of 1888 to founders of the Texas and Pacific Coal Company, including Robert Dickey Hunterqv, who became president of the new company, and H. K. Thurber of New York, for whom the town was named.

Colonel Hunter chose to deal with the dissident miners, who were affiliated with the Knights of Labor, with an iron hand. The new company fenced a portion of its property and within the enclosure constructed a complete town and mining complex, including schools, churches, saloons, stores, houses, an opera house seating over 650, a 200-room hotel, an ice and electric plant, and the only library in the county. Eventually the strike ended, and the miners and their families moved into the new town. In addition to the mines, the company operated commissary stores. As in the typical company town, low pay, drawn once a month, forced employees to utilize a check system between pay periods, whereby the customer drew scrip, reportedly discounted at 20 percent, for use at the company's commissary stores. In 1897 a second industry came to the town, a large brick plant; Hunter was also a partner in this operation, which, although it was separate from the mining company's holdings, used clay found on company property. A stockade, armed guards, and a barbed wire fence, which restricted labor organizers, peddlers, and other unauthorized personnel, regulated access to the town."

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hnt21


WK Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas:




"Initially workers excavated shale from a hill adjacent to the kilns. Then in 1903 the company laid a rail line from the brick plant to a richer shale deposit about a mile north of the kilns. Workers used electrically operated locomotives and dump cars on the spur line until gasoline-fueled engines came into use during the 1920s. Shortly after World War I the plant producing construction brick burned, leaving the company to concentrate on paving brick.

Economic changes spelled the end for the industrial enterprises at Thurber. As railroads changed from coal to oil as fuel for their steam locomotives during the first quarter of the twentieth century, the market weakened for the bituminous coal extracted by Thurber miners. After the company failed to meet demands for higher wages, the union workers organized a strike in 1921. In response to the diminished market the company continued to mine limited quantities of coal until the company closed the mines permanently in 1926. Changing economic times likewise effected this operation, for increased petroleum production led to expanded use of oil-based artificial asphalt as a paving material. Because asphalt was a far more cost effective material than using paving brick, the brick market declined as well. A reduced market, combined with general economic depression starting in 1929, led to the closure of the Thurber brick kilns in 1930.

...

The income from oil produced on company leases could not save Thurber. After the mines and the brick kilns ceased operating, the company permitted workers to live rent-free in Thurber until they could relocate to other jobs. In 1933 the firm moved its corporate offices to Fort Worth. Some company businesses continued for a while, including the company store, which did business until 1935. Though Thurber once claimed to be the largest town between Fort Worth and El Paso, boasting 10,000 residents, it was little more than a ghost town by the 1930s. Many of the workers' homes and other buildings were sold and moved to surrounding towns where they survive today, while other structures were dismantled and their materials salvaged for reuse elsewhere."

http://www.tarleton.edu/gordoncenter/Thurber%20History/thurberhistory.html


Thurber brick plant:




"The Gordon Center offers a glimpse into another time and place.  Hear stories about life in Thurber from the residents themselves.  Examine informative exhibits featuring historic photos and fascinating artifacts.  Watch motion film of Thurber residents at work and play.  Stroll past reconstructions of the mercantile store, the livery stable, the town bandstand, the 655-seat opera house, and the Snake Saloon, which boasted one of the largest horseshoe-shaped bars in the country.  Find out what happened when the discovery of oil disturbed the delicate balance between company and community.

The W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas, a research facility of Tarleton State University, is a combined museum and special collections library. Located at the site of the Thurber ghost town, its interactive exhibits explore the birth and death of a company town."

http://www.tarleton.edu/gordoncenter/index.html


Thurber company store:




Texas and Pacific Coal Company:

Company towns and the history of them are interesting , lately I've been spending a lot of time in south eastern Ohio and if you know what to look for you can see what house and buildings are "Coal Camp" ones.

I pass by Thurber all the time on my way out and back from Pecos...never had the time to stop, but always wanted to....

I'll have to make some time one of these times...

Interesting. Must of past by that no less that 20 times down the years.