When driving by Exit 367 on Interstate Highway 20 between Abilene and Weatherford, the red brick smokestack at Thurber stands tall as a vestige of local brick making a century ago. Over the course of three decades, the Texas and Pacific Coal Company peaked there with twenty-four kilns in a continuous rotation producing 80,000 bricks per day making approximately 600 million bricks during the life of the company.
Why did a coal mining company start making bricks? Company executives saw potential and opportunity in the shale clay resulting from mining operations at Thurber. This abundant resource plus the non-commercial pea- and nut-sized coal that could be used to fire the kilns created a practically perfect low-cost product known as Thurber bricks. The brick plant was established as Green & Hunter Bricks in 1897 as an independent entity with capital stock of $100,000. It was the best equipped brick plant of its kind west of the Mississippi. Three years later the brick business was purchased by Texas and Pacific Coal Company and became the Thurber Brick Company. They discontinued the production of pressed building bricks in 1909 and manufactured only vitrified paving bricks thereafter until the close of its business in 1931.
Most of the brickyard workers were rough, uneducated men – hard workers, hard drinkers, and steadfastly dedicated to their jobs and their families. Most of them lived a daily life of honesty with a true compassion for their fellow man. When a man or his family was in trouble, his co-workers were always ready to help. The brickyard employees were a breed of their own. Unlike the miners, who worked alone, these
men worked in teams, and the team spirit prevailed among them.
When everyone did their job, work at the brick plant moved smoothly for all the workers. Shale clay miners spent their days blasting holes in Shale Pit Mountain. Motormen loaded and drove the raw material to the brickyard where it was processed into clay. Brick makers used a variety of tools like molds and presses to prepare bricks to be fired. Setters stacked bricks into the kilns leaving enough space between bricks to allow for air movement and even heating. Firemen used their muscles to shovel coal for stoking the flames. Rustlers took the bricks from the kilns and loaded them into train carts for shipment to fulfill orders or move to storage for future orders.
Thurber bricks were made by the “stiff-mud” process in which mud was extruded under pressure in a continuous column, sliced into brick-sized units then dried and fired in kilns. In addition to vitrified bricks, it was determined that the clay made good drainpipes, roof tiles and floor tiles. The brickyard was one-half mile southeast of the business section of Thurber, and the shale deposits were one mile north. It took 30 days to process one kiln full of paving bricks.
