Santa Fe Railway in Scurry County

C. W. Post was born in Springfield, Illinois, on October 26, 1854, the Handbook of Texas says. He patented cultivators, a sulky plow, a harrow and a haystacker, and after a breakdown came to Fort Worth in 1886 to develop real estate, later building a woolen mill and a paper mill there. At a Battle Creek, Michigan, sanitarium in 1891 he began experimenting with a cereal drink he called Postum, and Grape-Nuts and Post Toasties made him millions. From 1911 to 1914 he spent thousands on rainmaking by dynamite along the Caprock, with little success.

What the plaque says

In 1909, when rail service was vital to economic growth, Scurry County had one line (The Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific) but lacked connections to distant markets. Local residents backed C. W. Post of Garza County who gave $50,000 to attract the Santa Fe Railway, which was then planning a route between Lubbock and Coleman. By the end of 1911, the Santa Fe had completed its tracks across Scurry County and erected depots for passenger amd freight traffic in the towns of Dermott, Hermleigh, Pyron and Snyder. The Santa Fe contributed much to the commercial and agricultural development of the county in the early years, and hauled many tons of equipment for the oil industry in later years. (1976, 1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Scurry County Museum — 2.5 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

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