Stanfield House, 1910
Snyder, Scurry County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Occupied over 50 years by Mrs. W.B. Stanfield, who with her husband, a rancher, built the home along plans she suggested to a drifting architect from Ft. Worth. Fine features include oak woodwork, pine floors, leaded glass panels at entry. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1964.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Mrs. W. B. Stanfield, wife of a Snyder rancher, lived in this home for more than fifty years. She sketched out the plans herself and handed them to a wandering architect passing through from Fort Worth. The result featured fine oak woodwork, pine floors, and leaded glass panels at the entry—comforts of settled prosperity on the West Texas ranching frontier.
Why it matters
The house reflects the growing permanence and refinement of West Texas ranch country in the early twentieth century, and a rancher's wife who shaped her own home's design.
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Related people
- · Mrs. W. B. Stanfield
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
E. W. Clark House, 1908
Snyder, TX
Built in 1908 as a rancher's town home in Snyder, the E. W. Clark House was a social center outfitted to last, with solid brass hardware, beveled-glass doors, and embossed leather wainscoting. Such in-town residences let West Texas ranching families enjoy the comforts and society of the county seat while their operations ran out on the range. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1964.
First Christian Church
Snyder, TX
Eight founding families gathered in 1898 to organize this congregation on the West Texas plains, building their first sanctuary on land donated by A. C. Wilmeth beside Deep Creek—where worshippers sometimes had to wade the swollen water after a rain. The distinctive octagonal building earned the affectionate nickname "Little Round Church." Growth forced a move in 1909, and after oil transformed Snyder's fortunes the congregation doubled by 1950, raising its present church in 1953.
Scurry County Jail of 1912
Snyder, TX
By 1911 Scurry County's two earlier jails, built in 1884 and 1886, had proven too small, so the commissioners court used bond money to purchase this site and raise a sturdy brick building, finished with local labor in 1912. The jailer and his family lived on the first floor, while prisoner cells and even a small hospital occupied the upper two stories. A grim feature set into the design was a trapdoor meant to serve as a hanging gallows. The jail did its duty for more than sixty years.
Channel of Deep Creek
Snyder, TX
Deep Creek was once a spring-fed tributary of the Colorado River that both began and ended within Scurry County. In the 1870s it watered buffalo hunters camped in hide-covered dugouts, and W. H. "Pete" Snyder's trading post on its bank grew into the town of Snyder. Though official surveyors named it Culvers Creek, the famed hunters John and J. Wright Mooar called it Deep Creek in 1876 and that name stuck, as the stream became the stage for the young town's picnics, horse races, and baptisms.