Twenty members in eleven cars joined us for a great drive to Mingus, a delicious lunch at New York Hill restaurant, and to see what remains of the town of Thurber.
The town was wholly owned by The Texas and Pacific Coal Company. Now a ghost town, Thurber was a major brick and coal center during its heyday in 1918-1920, attracting a population of some 10,000 from eighteen nationalities. The town was dismantled in the mid-1930s when oil supplanted coal as fuel for locomotives.
We had a very nice drive on a scenic, twisty and hilly route, leaving behind the relatively crowded cities south of Fort Worth. We enjoyed a good home-cooked lunch in a private room at New York Hill restaurant, named for the fancy neighborhood of managers hired from the east coast at the base of the hill. The restaurant also offers a panoramic view of downtown Thurber and seeks to preserve its history. After lunch, We briefly checked out the smokestack, the only remnant of the Thurber power plant which made the town one of the earliest to be electrified in the US. Finally, we explored the historic Thurber cemetery to see some interesting graves of unusual and/or prominent citizens buried there.
