Dermott
Snyder, Scurry County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for S. P. McDermott, who had crossroads store and was an early postmaster. Began as a community called Dark, 1-1/2 miles northeast. (School in area was named Bookout). Town moved 1909 to the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad. It had a hotel and a number of businesses. The Santa Fe was built in 1911, and the competing railroads made this a busy cattle shipping center, with full loading pens. Town moved 1915 to Santa Fe Railroad. The R.S. & P. tracks were taken up in 1942. The town had new population in the late 1940s, during county oil boom. (1966)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Dermott is a West Texas town that chased the railroads. It began as a crossroads community called Dark, took its later name from storekeeper and postmaster S. P. McDermott, and physically picked up and moved twice — in 1909 to the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific line and again in 1915 to the Santa Fe. With competing railroads and full loading pens, it became a busy cattle-shipping point, faded when the R.S. & P. tracks were pulled up in 1942, then revived during the county's late-1940s oil boom.
Why it matters
Dermott's repeated relocations capture how utterly the railroad dictated life and death for small towns on the settling plains — a community that literally followed the tracks.
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Related people
- · S. P. McDermott
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Former Townsite of Light
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The town of Light sprang up in 1899 around a new post office on D. C. McGregor's land, growing further when a ranch schoolhouse was relocated there and a two-room school followed in 1905. Its fortunes reversed almost as quickly: when nearby Fluvanna was surveyed in 1907 at the terminus of the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad, residents hauled their buildings a mile west to be on the rails. Light soon vanished, though the area still supplies water to its rival.
Fluvanna
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Fluvanna was born of a 1907 real estate venture, named by its surveyor for his home county in Virginia. When the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad reached the townsite in 1909, settlers marked the occasion with a three-day picnic and even hauled buildings over from nearby Light, Texas. The town thrived as a cattle-shipping and cotton point until the railroad ceased operating here in 1942, settling into life as a farming community.
Site of First Presbyterian Church of Fluvanna
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Founded in 1893 as the Deep Creek Congregation, this church followed its scattered West Texas flock from a ranch schoolhouse to the tiny community of Light and finally to Fluvanna, where residents relocated to be near the railroad in 1909. The old Light schoolhouse was even moved to this site in 1910 to serve as its home. The congregation carried on until it disbanded in 1975.
The Block 97 Controversy
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The Block 97 dispute grew out of Texas's practice of paying railroads in public land for the track they laid. In 1873 the Houston & Texas Central mistakenly claimed some 300,000 acres reserved for the Texas & Pacific; when the error surfaced in 1882 it voided countless deeds, and much of the land was unscrupulously resold, sparking a decade of tangled claims until the legislature declared it state school land in 1899.