Town of Knapp

The Handbook of Texas places Knapp on land drained by Bull Creek eleven miles west of Snyder and says the person the town was named for is unknown. Knapp had ten inhabitants in 1940 and twenty in 1947. It gained from the Scurry County oil boom of 1949-51, and by 1966 its population had reached 100. The Handbook dates the closing of the post office to 1950. In 1990 Knapp's population was ten, and the same figure was reported in 2000.

What the plaque says

Pioneers settling Bull Creek, 1888, where herds of bull buffalo grazed, called their community Bison. They founded the Baptist Church on the creek bank, the school in a nearby pasture. Bison was located on fringe of the ranch belonging to A. P. Bush and Benjamin Tillar, both prominent early Texas cattlemen. In 1890, name of town and post office (then housed in a dugout) became "Knapp" after the U.S. Post Office Department refused Bison because it was a duplicate name. In 1959, after a rousing decade of serving the oil boom workers, the post office closed. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Scurry County Museum — 12 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.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 25 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

• Ira — 8.2 mi
• The Block 97 Controversy — 8.9 mi
• Coleman Ranch Field Discovery Well — 11 mi
• The Prairie Dog (Cynomys Ludovicianus) — 12 mi