City of Snyder

By 1892, the Handbook of Texas says, Snyder had 600 people, two churches, two banks, a steam gin, a gristmill and two weekly papers, and in 1910 it counted 2,514. Women formed the Altrurian Club in 1908, which spawned eight more study clubs that did educational work while the schools developed. Until 1965 Black children attended the separate Abraham Lincoln School, which had only eight grades, and were told to go to San Antonio for high school. Western Texas College opened in 1971 with 649 students. Snyder had 12,705 people in 1980 and 10,783 in 2000.

What the plaque says

Originally established as a trading post on Deep Creek for buffalo hunters and called "Hide Town," because of many hide tents and dugouts, the city of Snyder takes it name from W. H. (Pete) Snyder, a Dutch trader who established a store here in 1878. A major event in the town's growth came in 1908 when the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad brought the "Iron Horse" to Snyder. The city incorporated in 1907. Late in 1948 the city moved into another era when the huge Canyon Reef Oil Field was discovered. With influx of oil field workers and personnel, the quiet county seat became an overcrowded boom town overnight, with the population jumping from 4,000 to 12,000 in a year's time. Today Snyder, the county seat of Scurry County, continues as a regional trade center for ranching, farming and oil production. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Scurry County Museum — 2.7 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• Heart of West Texas Museum — 23 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• National WASP WWII Museum — 32 mi
  Hangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.

More markers nearby

• Home County of Famous Frontiersman J. Wright Mooar — steps away
• County Named for Texas Confederate William R. Scurry 1821-1864 — steps away
• Channel of Deep Creek — steps away
• Scurry County's Canyon Reef Oil Field — steps away