Site of Store of William Henry (Pete) Snyder

Pete Snyder lost his town in court. The Handbook of Texas says he served in the Second Colorado Cavalry in the Civil War and fought at Westport, then worked railroads in Kansas and freighted in Texas. In 1883 he had 640 acres surveyed around his old trading post and filed a claim for a town, but rancher Tommy Nunn claimed the same land. The Texas Supreme Court awarded all of it to Nunn on June 7, 1886, and Snyder left town. He died at Colorado City in 1916 and had given the Methodists two stained-glass windows.

What the plaque says

Site of Store of William Henry (Pete) Snyder Adventurer, Civil War veteran, whose career included mining Colorado gold, building railroads in Kansas, hauling freight and buffalo hides in Texas; opened Snyder's first trading post, 1878. Built of lumber hauled from Ft. Worth in ox-wagons by Webb Brothers, Jim, Jeff and Ben. Store furnished supplies to buffalo hunters who infiltrated area, lived in dugouts on Deep Creek. After 3 years, Snyder quit the trading business, laid out part of original townsite and sold lots from his property. Moved to Colorado City, where he died in 1916 at age of 79. (1968)

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

• Site of Sanitarium of Alonzo Orrin Scarborough (1860-1952) Pioneer Doctor — steps away
• Site of The MacKenzie Trail — steps away
• Santa Fe Railway in Scurry County — steps away
• Scurry County's Canyon Reef Oil Field — steps away