DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the town of Thrall, out in Williamson County. Now, some towns ease their way into history. Others get there by degrees — a railroad siding here, a post office there, a little oil in the ground, and then one September night that the whole world would end up talking about.
Thrall is that second kind of town. It started out in 1876 as nothing more than a siding on the International and Great Northern Railroad. They called it Stiles Switch, after the landowners J.E. and F.N.
Stiles. Not exactly a name that echoes through the ages, but it was a start. Swiss and German settlers had been putting down roots in this part of the country, and Stiles Switch gave them a place to ship what they were growing.
Practical. Quiet. The kind of place that keeps its head down and does the work.
By 1901, the post office opened — and that's when the name changed. They named it for Homer S. Thrall, a Methodist minister and historian.
So from a railroad siding named for a couple of landowners, you get a town named for a man of the cloth with a gift for recording history. Fitting, when you consider what was coming. Oil.
Word of nearby discoveries has a way of turning a quiet shipping point into something else entirely, and Thrall was no exception. The growth came fast enough that in 1915 the town incorporated. Things were moving.
But nothing — and I mean nothing — in Thrall's story hits quite like September 8th and 9th of 1921. Over those two days, 38.21 inches of rain fell. Thirty-eight inches and change in roughly two days.
That number didn't just set a record for Texas or for the United States. That rainfall gave Thrall a world record. The whole world.
You can look at every corner of this earth and those two September days in a small Williamson County town still stand at the top. Thrall kept on. Since 1961, a Texas A&M University agricultural research center has operated right there in town.
And farming — the same basic work those Swiss and German settlers came here to do — remains the foundation of local life to this day. A railroad switch that became a shipping point. A post office that took on a minister's name.
An oil boom that turned a community into a town. And two days of rain that the whole world had to reckon with. That's Thrall, Texas — and the sky there, as it turns out, plays for keeps.
What the marker says
An 1876 International & Great Northern Railroad siding called "Stiles Switch" for landowners J.E. and F.N. Stiles, grew into a shipping point for the Swiss and Germans who settled in this area. The post office that opened in 1901 was named for Methodist minister and historian Homer S. Thrall. Nearby oil discoveries and sudden growth caused the town to be incorporated in 1915. The 38.21-inch rainfall of Sept. 8-9, 1921, gave Thrall a world record. Since 1961, Texas A.&.M. University agricultural research center has operated here. Farming remains the basic local industry. (1976)