Scurry County Museum

Snyder began in 1878 as a trading post on Deep Creek built by William Henry (Pete) Snyder, a buffalo hunter and trader from Pennsylvania. Other hunters camped around it in hide shelters, and the place was known as Hide Town and, given some of the people in it, Robber's Roost. Snyder drew up a town plan in 1882, and when Scurry County organized in 1884 his settlement became the county seat. It stayed a farming and ranching town until 1948.

That year oil was found in the Canyon Reef formation north of town. Within a year the population jumped from about 4,000 to more than 12,000, with a tent and trailer city on the north edge, and it peaked near 16,000 before the boom ended in late 1951 and left half-finished buildings behind. Snyder rebuilt in the 1960s and in 1968 was named one of eleven All-America Cities.

County residents voted the bonds for the museum, organized in 1970 and opened in 1974 on the college campus. Its Scurry Gallery tells that history with more than 16,000 artifacts in the collection, among them the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, a chuckwagon a rancher brought in 1878, and the millionth barrel of oil. A South Gallery carries changing exhibits and art shows, and the museum hosts talks, signings and workshops.