Site of Thurber Big Lake and Dairy

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Site of Thurber Big Lake and Dairy, out in Erath County. Now, Thurber is a town with a story for every acre, and this particular story starts with water. It starts with not quite enough of it.

In 1891, somebody decided a twenty-acre lake south of the Thurber townsite would do the trick. They called it Little Lake, and for a while, sure, it served the community. But water has a way of running short when a town is thirsty enough, and Little Lake proved inadequate.

Five years later, the answer came in a much bigger package: a hundred and fifty acres of lake, constructed about a mile southeast of town. They called it Big Lake, and that name, well, it earned itself. R.

D. Hunter, president of the Texas and Pacific Coal Company, saw opportunity in all that water, and he organized a hunting and fishing club at the Big Lake for company executives and staff. So here you've got this working lake doing serious work, irrigating company-owned farmland in the valley below and supplying water to the nearby Thurber Dairy, and also doubling as a retreat for the men who ran the whole operation.

That is a lake pulling its weight. The Thurber Dairy stood close by, and you want to know what outlasted nearly everything else at that site? The twin silos.

Decades later, those two silos were still visible, standing out there like they were keeping watch over something the rest of the world had mostly forgotten. Some things just refuse to disappear.

What the marker says

In 1891, a 20-acre "Little Lake" was built south of the Thurber townsite to supply water to the community. It soon proved inadequate, however, and five years later a 150-acre "Big Lake" was constructed here about a mile southeast of town. Texas and Pacific Coal Company president R. D. Hunter organized a hunting and fishing club at the Big Lake for company executives and staff. Water from the lake irrigated company-owned farmland in the valley below, and provided water for the nearby Thurber Dairy. The dairy's twin silos were still visible decades later. (1995)