City of Snyder
Snyder, Scurry County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Originally established as a trading post on Deep Creek for buffalo hunters and called "Hide Town," because of many hide tents and dugouts, the city of Snyder takes it name from W. H. (Pete) Snyder, a Dutch trader who established a store here in 1878. A major event in the town's growth came in 1908 when the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad brought the "Iron Horse" to Snyder. The city incorporated in 1907. Late in 1948 the city moved into another era when the huge Canyon Reef Oil Field was discovered. With influx of oil field workers and personnel, the quiet county seat became an overcrowded boom town overnight, with the population jumping from 4,000 to 12,000 in a year's time. Today Snyder, the county seat of Scurry County, continues as a regional trade center for ranching, farming and oil production. (1966)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Snyder began in 1878 as "Hide Town," a rough camp of tents and dugouts where buffalo hunters traded on Deep Creek, taking its lasting name from trader W.H. "Pete" Snyder. The railroad's arrival in 1908 knit it into the wider economy, but it was the 1948 discovery of the vast Canyon Reef oil field that transformed the quiet county seat into an overnight boom town, tripling its population in a single year.
Why it matters
Snyder's arc from buffalo camp to railroad town to oil boom compresses the whole story of how the West Texas plains were settled and repeatedly remade by commerce.
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Related people
- · W.H. "Pete" Snyder
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sites of Texas & Pacific Railway Depots
Colorado City, TX
Rail service reached Colorado City on April 16, 1881, when a Texas & Pacific supply train arrived to build the town's first depot, and cattle pens soon rose on donated land nearby. The railroad and stockyards made the town the great shipping and supply hub for the vast ranching country of West Texas and eastern New Mexico — sending out cattle, hides, wool, salt, and buffalo bones — until passenger service finally ended in 1967.
Texas & Pacific Railway
Colorado City, TX
When the Texas & Pacific Railway pushed through this valley in 1880, it turned a scatter of tents and dugouts into the "Cattle Capital of West Texas." Ranchers like Charles Goodnight and the great XIT had already trailed herds into a country where the last buffalo were vanishing and Texas Rangers guarded against raids. By April 1881 the railhead served some 350 residents with a county government, school, and newspaper, and soon shipped out thousands of cattle and freighted in the barbed wire and windmills that fenced the open range.
First State Bank Building
Snyder, TX
Built in 1907-08 beside Deep Creek, where the trail of Gen. Ranald Mackenzie's U.S. Cavalry had once run, this Snyder landmark housed the First State Bank & Trust Co., an early bank serving West Texas cattlemen and ranchers. It closed during the depression year of 1931 and afterward sheltered many tenants, including the local newspaper. Its Ionic-columned Greek Revival exterior survives unchanged from the day it was built.
Site of O.K. Wagon Yard
Snyder, TX
In the early 1900s the O.K. Wagon Yard on Snyder's old Jackass Avenue offered travelers rooms and horse stalls for two bits apiece, along with blacksmithing, harness repair, and stud animals — and, with the right introduction, a jar of homemade "White Lightning." Saturdays brought passed-hat rodeos, and "first Mondays" drew farmers, ranchers, and mule skinners to swap livestock and goods. The yard closed in the 1930s.