Spurlin was located on the Stephenville North and South Texas Railroad 13 miles north of Hamilton, 7 miles south of Carlton and 4 miles from the Leon River. An auction for the sale of lots in the new town of Spurlin, a project of John L Spurlin, was held 21 November, 1908, in front of the Spurlin Depot Special trains from Stephenville and Hamilton brought people to the auction. Excursion fare to attend the auction was twenty-five cents from Carlton, forty cents from Hamilton, fifty cents from Alexander, and ninety cents from Stephenville. 

C. H. King, P. M. Massingill, Minnie Pietzsch, William Joseph "Joe" Stribling, W. W. Parker, W. C. Schrank, Walter Richardson, A. Boatwright, A. A. Henry, August Weid, Mrs. A. B. Barnett, J. B. Womble, H. R. Brummett, and many more bought property and paid from $1.00 to $40.00 for the lots.

Spurlin had a gin, drug store, blacksmith shop, grocery, general merchandise store, lodge hall, Baptist tabernacle, and Methodist Church. The gin had a manually operated press. A tornado (cyclone) on 29 September, 1917, did much damage to most of the buildings in the town of Spurlin. The Methodist Church was scattered all over the countryside, but its piano was left on the church foundation. September 29, 1917, was the day my maternal grandparents, Robert Jeff Fergusson and his wife, Ida Rose Anna Grisham Fergusson with their children, William Claude and Clara Elsie were moving into a two-story house in Spurlin. Aware that a storm was brewing in the afternoon, but preoccupied with trying to move all of their possessions inside the house and in corralling their animals and poultry, they did not realize the speed of the approaching storm. As they left their house, it was struck by the tornado shifting the west end of the two-story house into the air and burying the east end in the ground. If they had left their house earlier, they might have been injured by the wind which had taken away their smoke house which was on the path to the cellar. A few days after the storm Jeff and Ida moved their family back to Blue Ridge.

The horseless carriage contributed to the demise of Spurlin. Gone are the railroad, stores, churches, and people. The site of Spurlin is now a farm marked only by  the crumbling brick walls of the school .