Thrift

Thrift is on a spur off State Highway 240, six miles northwest of Burkburnett in northeastern Wichita County. For several years after the discovery of oil near Burkburnett in 1918, thousands of persons flooded the northeastern corner of the county. Literally overnight, tent cities appeared. Unlike many other boomtowns that sprang up during this time, Thrift managed to survive after the oil boom ended. The community, organized sometime in 1919 and apparently named for the Thrift Waggoner Bank building, little resembled the boomtowns that were its neighbors. The crime and violence associated with the "oil cities" were absent from Thrift, and its population was small compared to that of the other boomtowns. A post office opened there in 1925 and operated until 1954. Some neighboring boomtowns had been abandoned by 1930. Thrift apparently never reported a population of more than fifty, which is the estimated number of residents there during the beginning of World War II. By the late 1950s that figure had declined to twenty, and thereafter no further population statistics were available for Thrift.