About 1895, the Texas and Pacific Coal Company built the first-class Hotel Knox. Besides serving out-of-town guests, it was a social center in Thurber and home to many of the town’s white collar workers, including store clerks and staff of the adjacent mining office, where general manager William Knox Gordon maintained his headquarters. The Hotel Knox burned in 1907 and was replaced by the Plummer Hotel. Although the town was dismantled in the 1930s, ruins of the mining office were still visible decades later.