Texas, they say, is so rich you can pull money right out of the ground. It must be true, because in a West Texas town called Thurber, the Texas Pacific Coal & Oil Company. grew rich digging coal, drilling oil, and making bricks from the clay soil. The Texas Pacific Co., or TP, as it was known at the beginning, was born in 1888 just seventy-five miles west of Fort Worth and took its name from its only customer, Texas Pacific Railroad. Employing mostly...