Witness Tree

Texas surveyors measured in Spanish units. The Handbook of Texas gives a vara as about thirty-three and one-third inches, with 1,900.8 varas to a mile and 5,645.4 square varas to an acre. A million square varas, a labor, comes to roughly 177 acres. The word first meant a long, thin branch, then a lance carried as a judge's badge of office, then a measuring stick. Stephen F. Austin's survey contracts required the vara as the standard unit and bearing trees at principal corners, marked with the owner's initials or with mounds at least three feet high.

What the plaque says

Witness Tree Across the street, 100 feet north of this site, is the stump of a hackberry used in early land surveys as a "witness" tree. By Texas custom (based on Spanish law), at least 2 objects were used to witness land boundaries, measured in varas, cordels, and leagues. Land corners were pointed out formally, with grantee being told "in a loud voice" that he was vested with the property; he responded by throwing stones, shouting loudly, shooting guns and making other noises. When land at this site was first surveyed for the grantee, Houston & Great Northern Railroad, on May 29, 1873, it was in Jack County. (Scurry County was created in 1876.) "Witness" points were stakes in the prairie, an 8-inch mound, and Culver (Deep) Creek. This was hostile Indian country. Surveyors had rifles on one shoulder, transits on the other. Frontier lands had to be surveyed, as payment for state obligations. Before this hackberry tree was marked with the X in 1881, buffalo hunters had killed the animals that were the "walking commissary" of the Indians. Strong campaigns by Gen. R. S. MacKenzie and the U.S. 4th Cavalry had sent the Indians to reservations. The MacKenzie Trail was mapped. Surveys also spoke of the Snyder Store, for which this town was named. (1966) Used in early land surveys to indicate boundaries. Historical marker is on library grounds across street. (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

• City of Snyder — steps away
• 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