When R.D. Hunter took possession of Thurber in November of 1888, he found the miners on strike. He posted a notice offering the miners less pay if they would go back to work. The miners responded by moving off company property and starting a community called Striketown. Here Erath farmers were finally able to deliver fresh vegetables and meat to encourage the strikers. Hunter paid $10,000 to transport 172 miners from Indiana to replace the strikers. The miners described Hunter as a “feudalist of old who dreamed of a strickly monopolistic empire.” Hunter is best remembered for building a well-guarded fence around the entire town of Thurber to keep out Erath farmers and force the miners to buy at the company store. Striketown is now known as Mingus.

Willie M. Floyd, Thurber, Texas: An Abandoned Coal Field Town, Master’s Thesis, Southern Methodist University, June 1939; Mary Jane Gentry, Thurber: The Life and Death of a Texas Town, Master’s Thesis, University of Texas, August 1946; and Thurber Papers, Thurber Collection, Southwestern Collection, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.