DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this spot in Erath County. Now, Thurber — that was a company town, and the Texas and Pacific Coal Company did not do things halfway. Around 1895, they put up the Hotel Knox, and they called it first-class, which in a coal town out on the Texas plains was no small statement.
It wasn't just a place to hang your hat if you'd come in from out of town. The Hotel Knox was the social center of Thurber — the kind of place where the town's white collar workers ate their suppers and laid their heads, store clerks and office staff alike, all living and moving through those same polished halls. Right next door sat the mining office, where the general manager himself, William Knox Gordon, kept his headquarters.
So you had the boss's office on one side and the town's finest hotel on the other, and between the two of them, that block was the nerve center of the whole operation. Then 1907 rolls around, and the Hotel Knox burns. Just like that.
Gone. The Plummer Hotel rose to take its place, and Thurber kept on going — for a while. But the town was dismantled in the 1930s, the whole thing pulled apart piece by piece, the way company towns tend to go when the company's done with them.
And yet, decades after that dismantling, the ruins of the mining office were still visible right here — stone and mortar outlasting everything else, quietly holding the memory of William Knox Gordon's headquarters long after the hotel had burned and the Plummer had come and gone and the last worker had packed his trunk and left Thurber behind.
What the marker says
The Texas and Pacific Coal Company built the first-class Hotel Knox about 1895. In addition to serving out-of-town guests, it was a social center in Thurber and home to many of the town's white collar workers, including store clerks and staff of the adjacent mining office where general manager William Knox Gordon maintained his headquarters. The Hotel Knox burned in 1907 and was replaced by the Plummer Hotel. Although the town was dismantled in the 1930s, ruins of the mining office were still visible decades later. (1995)