Snyder, Texas

Everything Snyder is known for

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Music in Snyder

Songs About Snyder

I'm a Tool Pusher from Snyder
Slim Willet
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"I'm a Tool Pusher from Snyder"
running out of time
casey donahew
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Texas Colorado River 6 songs Interstate 20 13 songs

History of Snyder

The Boom That Changed Everything RoadyGoat

Imagine standing on the courthouse square here in 1948. Snyder is a quiet ranching town of about 4,000 people. Then, that July, the major oil companies hit it big, a massive discovery in the Canyon Reef formation just north of town. Within months, Snyder becomes a scene of pure chaos. Within a year the population triples, climbing from about 4,000 to more than 12,000, and by 1951 it swells to nearly 16,000. Fortune-seekers pour in, living in tents, shacks, and cars. The phone company reported having 1,000 applications for just 200 available lines. Schools ran in three shifts to handle all the new children. There was a waiting list to get a post office box. It was a classic boomtown, full of mud, money, and frantic energy. The discovery of the Canyon Reef Field completely remade Snyder from a small agricultural town into a roaring oil town, and the wealth from that boom built the modern city you're driving through. But the name folks around here are proudest of is older than the oil. Back in 1876, buffalo hunter J. Wright Mooar shot a rare white buffalo near Deep Creek, and Snyder has been the Home of the White Buffalo ever since, a story the town still celebrates every October during White Buffalo Days.

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Engineering an Oil Boom RoadyGoat

Snyder's famous oil boom wasn't just luck; it was a feat of geology and engineering. For years, companies drilled in Scurry County with modest success. The big prize remained hidden. Geologists suspected the existence of a massive, ancient limestone reef deep underground—part of the 'Horseshoe Atoll.' Think of it not as solid rock, but as a porous, 300-million-year-old structure like a giant, buried sponge. The challenge was finding the right spot to tap into it. In July 1948, Sun Oil and Humble's No. 1 Emil Schattel found the reef at 6,891 feet. That November, Magnolia's No. 1 Winston Brothers opened the Kelly field, and Standard of Texas' No. 1 Jessie Brown 2 came in at 6,414 feet making 532 barrels a day, opening North Snyder. The Railroad Commission later ruled they were all drinking from the same reservoir and combined them as Kelly-Snyder. That discovery triggered a technological race to understand the reef's complex structure and to use advanced drilling and production techniques to get the oil out. It was a triumph of applying scientific theory to unlock one of the richest petroleum deposits in North America.

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The Legend of the White Buffalo RoadyGoat

In October 1876, on Deep Creek -- the stream that still runs through Snyder -- a buffalo hunter named J. Wright Mooar spotted something almost nobody ever saw: a white buffalo. White buffalo were exceptionally rare and held sacred by many Plains tribes, including the Comanche and Kiowa who had just been pushed off this land. Mooar was a commercial hunter who shipped hides by the thousand, but he kept this one. Theodore Roosevelt is said to have offered him five thousand dollars for it, and Mooar turned him down. The hide traveled -- it was shown at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair -- but it never left the family, and Mooar's descendants have it still. Snyder keeps the story anyway. A white buffalo stands in statue form on the Scurry County courthouse lawn, and the Scurry County Museum tells the tale and displays Mooar's .50-90 Sharps rifle, a direct link to the final days of the great herds.

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McLaughlin, Clarence Thurston

1919

Clarence Thurston McLaughlin, oilman, rancher, and philanthropist, was born on January 31, 1897, in Arthurs, Pennsylvania, one of five children of John Mark and Cora (Griffith) McLaughlin. His father was an oil producer in the fields of western Pennsylvania, and the children attended the public schools in Shippenville, located near the world's first oil town, Titusville. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, McLaughlin served with the 503rd Aero Squadron. Following twenty-five months of military service, he bought a train ticket to Texas with his discharge money to try his hand in the oil industry there. In 1919 he became a partner in a drilling company based in Wichita Falls. Within two years the company was operating several rigs, and McLaughlin introduced the Diamond M logo. On August 6, 1921, he married Evelyn Claire Littleton, a schoolteacher from Knoxville, Tennessee, who had come to Wichita Falls as an employee of Miller Pipeline Company. The couple had three daughters and a son. During the 1920s and 1930s McLaughlin drilled in the Permian Basin around Big Spring. In 1935 he purchased a ranch in Scurry County twelve miles southwest of Snyder and named it the Diamond M. He added acreage to the original purchase until the ranch at one time totaled 5,200 acres. McLaughlin experimented with new seed varieties and methods. He stocked his ranch with Hereford cattle and, initially, with sheep. He also raised show horses. The discovery of the Canyon Reef field near Snyder in 1948 brought even more wealth to the McLaughlin family, especially after the Lion County Company's No. 2 McLaughlin was completed on Diamond M land in December at 650 barrels a day. Within the next year drilling crews were bringing in a new producing well on the ranch at an average of every five days. In 1950 McLaughlin built an office building in Snyder. He also purchased the 6,000-acre Kuteman Ranch in southern Parker County in 1950, the 2,300-acre Shamrock Ranch near Colorado Springs in 1953, the 31,000-acre Circle Ranch hear Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1958, and the 1,459-acre Young Ranch in western Fisher County in 1965. Later, as the oil boom leveled off, the McLaughlins sold several of these holdings, but they kept the Young and Shamrock properties; the latter, in Colorado, was expanded to about 5,000 acres and became a second home for the family. As early as Beauford Jester 's 1946 campaign for governor, McLaughlin became interested in state politics and served on the Texas Democratic Executive Committee. In 1956 he was the party's director of finance. He often hosted parties at the Diamond M Ranch for state and national Democratic party leaders, numbering among his guests such luminaries as Coke Stevenson and Lyndon B. Johnson . McLaughlin served on the Texas Hospital Board (1944–48), the Texas Technological College Board of Regents (1948–54), the Texas Public Safety Commission (1960–66), and for fifteen years the advisory board for the Southwest Legal Foundation. In 1949 he established the Diamond M Foundation, financed by royalties from his ranch, for the support of various education and philanthropic undertakings. Through this foundation the Diamond M Museum , featuring the art treasures he and his wife had collected since 1921, was opened at his Diamond M office building in 1964. Because of his interest in western art, McLaughlin was named to the art committee of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City. He also was on the first board of directors of the Petroleum Museum, Library, and Hall of Fame, near Midland. He died on July 29, 1975, and was interred beside his wife in Hillside Memorial Gardens near Snyder.

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Snyder, TX (Scurry County)

1878

Snyder, the county seat of Scurry County, is at the junction of U.S. highways 84 and 180, eighty-seven miles southeast of Lubbock in the central part of the county. It had its beginnings in 1878, when a buffalo hunter and trader, William Henry (Pete) Snyder , a native of Pennsylvania, built a trading post on the banks of Deep Creek. Other hunters were attracted to the post, and a colony of buffalo-hide dwellings grew up around it. These dwellings, as well as the occasionally dubious character of their inhabitants, gave the town its first names, "Hide Town," and "Robber's Roost." In 1882 Snyder drew up a town plan and invited immigration. The first public school was established sometime that year. In 1884, when Scurry County was organized, Synder's settlement was chosen as the county seat. By 1892 Snyder had a population of 600, two churches, two banks, a steam gin, a gristmill, and two weekly newspapers, the Scurry County Citizen and the Coming West . Construction began on the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific Railway in 1907, the same year that Snyder's city charter was granted. In 1911 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway laid tracks through Snyder. By 1910, the first year census figures were recorded for Snyder, the town had a population of 2,514. A women's literary circle, the Altrurian Club, was formed in 1908, and eventually spawned eight more study clubs. While the public school system was still developing, these clubs performed significant educational functions; later their focus changed to public service. Snyder remained a farming and ranching community until 1948, when oil was discovered on the Canyon Reef formation north of town. Within a year the population jumped from around 4,000 to over 12,000, a tent and trailer city sprang up on the town's northern edge. The boom was over by late 1951, and the population, which had peaked at around 16,000, stabilized at 11,000. Snyder was left an ugly city with many vacant or half-completed buildings. During the 1960s city officials began refurbishing, and in 1964 a long-range planning committee improved opportunities for low-income citizens. By 1968 in a contest cosponsored by the National Municipal League and Look Magazine , the city was named one of only eleven All-American cities in the United States. Large industries located in Snyder during the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and its population began to rise again. By 1960 Snyder had seven elementary schools, two junior highs, and a high school. Until 1965 black children were forced to attend a separate facility, the Abraham Lincoln School, which had only eight grades. If they wished to attend high school, they were told to go to San Antonio. In 1969 a long string of failed attempts finally culminated in the approval of a proposal for a junior college, and in the fall of 1971 the new Western Texas College opened with 649 students. In 1986 enrollment was over 1,000. The Diamond M Foundation was established in 1950 by oilman and rancher Clarence T. McLaughlin to collect works of American artists. The Diamond M Museum opened in 1964 and five years later doubled in size. In 1990 it housed over eighty bronzes and 200 paintings, including works by Andrew Wyeth and Peter Hurd , and is considered among the best collections in Texas. In 1980 Snyder had a population of 12,705. The Snyder Daily News has been published since 1950. Oil has remained important to the city's economy. In the late 1960s Scurry County became the leading oil-producing county in Texas as the result of a locally developed method of injecting carbon dioxide into the formation to increase the pressure and thereby increase the yield. In 1973 Scurry oil companies recovered their billionth barrel of oil. In 1987 ranching and cotton farming also continued to employ a large part of the population. In 1990 the population was 12,195. The population dropped to 10,783 in 2000.

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Snyder, William Henry [Pete]

1878

William Henry (Pete) Snyder (Snider), West Texas merchant, was born on November 29, 1836, in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, one of seven brothers. None of his records shows the names of his mother and father, but he had brothers named Charles and Tom. Pete and Charles were both in the Union Army during the Civil War , and Tom fought with the Confederates. Snyder moved to Manhattan, Kansas, in 1857 to homestead. He stayed about a year and moved to Central City, Colorado, to mine gold. He joined Company D, Second Colorado Cavalry, at Spanish Bar, Colorado, on September 25, 1862. He was called to active duty on November 17 of that year and began service at Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory. In the spring of 1863 he was sent to Council Grove, Kansas, to help protect New Mexico-bound trains from William C. Quantrill and his raiders. Private Snyder fought in the battles of Big Blue, Little Blue, Mill Creek, and Westport. He was discharged at Fort Riley, Kansas, on June 20, 1865, and went back to Colorado. There he discovered that others had taken his mining claims, and he returned shortly to Kansas, where he worked on the Kansas-Pacific Railroad, a project for which Buffalo Bill Cody was supplying meat at this time. Another famous hunter, Josiah Wright Mooar , also worked there. From 1869 to 1876 Snyder traveled around Texas earning his living as a freighter and supplier for buffalo hunters and settlers. When Mooar and his hunting party came into West Texas in 1876, Snyder went with them to haul their hides. He set up a trading post on Sand Creek, but in 1878, tired of the remote location, he bought a trading post at Deep Creek, where a small community had begun to develop. The settlement, known earlier as Robber's Roost, Hide Town, Scab Town, and Deep Creek, came to be called Snyder's Place as the store prospered. Snyder operated the store until 1881, when he moved to Colorado (now Colorado City), Mitchell County, Texas, where the Texas and Pacific Railway lowered his shipping costs and opened a more profitable market. The trading-post settlement kept the name Snyder, which became official on July 2, 1907. In 1883 Snyder heard that Scurry County would soon be officially organized as a county and that Snyder would be the county seat. He hired W. W. Marshall to survey the 640 acres surrounding the site of his old trading post, filed a claim for his town on September 4, 1883, and began plans to sell lots. A bitter battle erupted in the courts when a local rancher, Tommy Nunn, also claimed the land. Nunn offered to divide the land, but Snyder refused to compromise. The Texas Supreme Court awarded all the land to Nunn on June 7, 1886, and Snyder left town, rarely to return. In 1899 he bought several sections of land near Dunn, Texas. He lived on the ranch, which was about fifteen miles from Colorado City, for about five years and in 1904 moved back to Colorado City. Snyder was married to Maria Louise (Nellie) Fairclough in Colorado, Texas, on February 7, 1883, by Rev. O. F. Rogers, a Presbyterian minister. The Snyders had no children. Nellie Snyder died on June 7, 1913, in Colorado City, and Pete Snyder died there on October 4, 1916. They are buried in the Colorado City Cemetery, on a part of their ranchland that they had donated for the cemetery. Their land was divided and sold for taxes after their deaths. Although Snyder was not a member of any religious group, he donated two stained-glass windows to the local Methodist church, from which he was buried.

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Scurry County's Canyon Reef Oil Field

1948

Attracted international attention by size and engineering achievements. During 1948 four widely dispersed wells penetrated the Canyon Reef Formation at depth of 6,500 feet. Soon more than 2,000 wells defined gigantic fields which contained an estimated four billion barrels of oil. This rapid drilling involved thousands of people--contractors, drillers, engineers, geologists, lawyers, office workers, roughnecks, roustabouts, suppliers. Oil companies poured $300,000,000 into the operations. By 1951 engineers saw that only 20% of Canyon Reef oil could be produced in competitive operations, but recovery could be doubled by pressure maintenance in unitization. Successful formation of Diamond "M", Sacroc, Sharon Ridge Canyon, and Cogdell Units and initiation of fluid injection were events of immense significance. The programs showed by 1955 that free American enterprise can work out voluntarily the most modern and efficient conservation procedures. Thus Scurry County--with a petroleum industry dating from shallow wells in 1923--has become a pioneer in oil history, and is assured a high level, stable economy for many future decades. (1967)

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Scurry, William R. (County Named For Texas Confederate)

1861

Member Secession Convention. As Lt. Colonel 4th Texas Cavalry Regiment, ably commanded forces at Val Verde and Glorieta Canyon battles in Arizona-New Mexico Campaign 1861-62. Promoted Brigadier General. Commanded immediate land attack recapture of Galveston 1863. In Red River Campaign to prevent Texas invasion, led brigade Battles of Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, La. and Jenkins Ferry, Ark. where he bravely met death. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy. Erected by the State of Texas 1963

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Home County of Famous Frontiersman J. Wright Mooar

1870

(Aug. 10, 1851-May 1, 1940) Champion hunter of buffalo--largest game animal in North America. Born in Vermont; came west at 19. Began hunting in 1870 to supply hides for market. In partnership with his brother, John W. Mooar, in 1873 established first buffalo hunting camp in the Texas Panhandle. On Oct. 7, 1876, at his first hunting camp in Scurry County, killed a rare albino buffalo--one of two known to have been killed in Texas. The hide of that albino, afterward shown in 1904 St. Louis Fair and many other occasions, is now preserved here in Scurry County by Mooar's descendants. Hunted regularly until 1879; in 1881 helped furnish game and hay to feed construction men and animals building Texas & Pacific Railroad in West Texas. During his career, he shot about 22,000 buffalo--a record probably unsurpassed. His ability to hit a vital spot at a distance of 1,000 feet or farther won the respect of such Indians as Comanche Chief Quanah Parker, who became his friend in later life. Began ranching with his brother in 1877. Also had a business in Colorado City, 1881-1905. Highly esteemed. Site of killing of white buffalo (10 mi. NW of here) is near the Old Mooar Ranch headquarters, where his hand-hug water well is now surrounded by oil wells. (1967)

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Things to Do in Snyder

day trip
How to Grill Up Tasty Lamb - Defaid Livestock, Snyder, TX

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Sports in Snyder

⭐ HOMETOWN LEGENDS Class 4A · Football

Snyder Tigers — Snyder — a college & pro athletic pipeline

4 alumni who reached major-college or pro sports

Snyder High School, a proud Class 4A institution, has a notable history of producing athletes who have gone on to achieve at the major-college and professional levels. The Bulldog tradition of excellence is reflected in the careers of several alumni who have made their mark in the world of sports. These individuals represent the dedication and talent cultivated within the Snyder athletic programs.

Among the distinguished alumni are Sonny Cumbie, a football coach, and Hayward Clay, a former NFL player. Tony Degrate, also a former NFL player, and Jack Spikes, another former NFL player, further highlight the school's impact on professional football. Their journeys from Snyder High School to higher levels of competition are a source of pride for the community.

Pro/D1 alumni
4
Class
4A
Key Players
  • Sonny Cumbie — , football coach{{cite web|publisher=The Snyder News|last=Graff|first=Reed|url=https://www
  • Hayward Clay — , former NFL player
  • Tony Degrate — , former NFL player
  • Jack Spikes — , former NFL player
The moment

Sonny Cumbie became a football coach.

Sources: Wikipedia · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Snyder

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