Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railway

The Handbook of Texas says the company was chartered to build about 200 miles, to the west line of Bailey County, with $200,000 in capital. Its first locomotive and original rails were bought used from the Texas and Pacific, and it sold its service through agents in cities from New York to San Francisco. The only wreck came in April 1926, when a bridge washed out. Diesels replaced steam between 1950 and 1955, and in 1960 the company began buying and leasing tank cars. In 1972 it owned 641 freight cars and netted $516,679.

What the plaque says

The Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railway was one of the country's most successful short-line railroads. Chartered on Oct. 1, 1906, by General F. W. James and a group of Abilene businessmen, it ran from Roscoe to Snyder and Fluvanna, though in 1941 the Fluvanna line was discontinued. Once it was completed, Ed S. Hughes and H.O. Wooten took over the operation. Wooten saved it from a financial crisis by making deals with California produce shippers and with the Santa Fe and Texas & Pacific railroads to use the line as a link between them. In 1967, the company was sold to the Murchison brothers of Dallas and Roger Mize of Snyder. The deregulation of railroads in 1980 resulted in its closing in 1984. Nevertheless, it was a major factor in Roscoe's settlement and growth. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National WASP WWII Museum — 4.4 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.
• Pioneer Museum — 8.1 mi
  Nolan County's settlement story in a dozen rooms of Judge R. A. Ragland's 1906 house in Sweetwater, a town that started as a dugout store for buffalo hunters and a post office called Blue Goose.
• Heart of West Texas Museum — 19 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.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 24 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.

More markers nearby

• Roscoe Cemetery — 1.2 mi
• W.A.S.P. Training Base: Avenger Field — 3.9 mi
• Women Airforce Service Pilots — 4.0 mi
• Sweetwater Cemetery — 6.8 mi