The Thurber saloon was called the "Snake". It sported a horseshoe shaped bar that could serve a hundred customers.  Said to be the largest bar in Texas at the time. Two train carloads of coal were traded to the Ft Worth Texas brewery for a train carload of barreled beer per week. It took a lot of suds to cut the coal dust.



This token was used in the company owned general store. Extremely few of these tokens are known to exist.



Two examples of this token are known. Both were recovered with metal detectors in Ft. Worth. The reverse has a rare Ft Worth die sinkers "Makers" mark. Bradley mfg. co. This token was most likely used for paying the coal wagon driver for deliveries.





Thurber, in the Northwest corner of Erath County, was the site of mining operations by the Johnson Coal Company in the fall of 1886. In 1888 Johnson sold out to the Texas Pacific Coal Company (T&PCC) because of labor troubles. A new town was built and named after H.K.Thurber in 1888. In 1903 the United Mine Workers organized the miners and other trades, Thurber became the only 100% Union town in the United States. Clay deposits on the property provided a brick industry to Thurber and the brick making plant operated until about 1930. In 1917 oil was discovered in Ranger and the companies name was changed to Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company. The railroads began converting to oil fired locomotives causing the company to abrogate its contract with the miners in 1921 and in 1933 the town was ordered abandoned. The dynamite tokens from Thurber are the only exploder tokens known from Texas and are quite rare.



This is a replica of the original token shown above. The replica token can be bought from the museum in Thurber. The museum provides excellent dioramas of the Texas coal mining town in its heyday.

A miner's tag used in the coal mines at Thurber

This is a "Frog". It was used to impress the union logo in the bricks after Thurber was Unionized.

Thurber "Union" brick.