Plains Trail Region

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In 1876 professional buffalo hunter J. Wright Mooar killed a rare white buffalo on Deep Creek, which flows through today’s Snyder. A few years earlier, Indian hunter Col. Ranald S. MacKenzie blazed a frontier trail that now passes by the Scurry County Courthouse, a 1911 building slipcovered by a 1972 remodel. The courthouse lawn features the statue of a white buffalo, which speaks volumes about the epic struggles of white settlers and Plains Indians. The White Buffalo Days celebration fills the square with crafts, food and music, as well as staged gunfights, Indian dancing and cowboy poets. A tent city sprang up during the 1940s to house workers flooding into Snyder during a local oil boom. Such diverse eras and many others take shape at the Scurry County Museum on the Western Texas College campus. The museum boasts a leather shop that catered to cowboys and an early telephone exchange once housed in the operator’s home. The museum also hosts a variety of traveling exhibits, art shows and special events. The nearby grounds of Snyder Coliseum is home to three historic structures--the 1883 Cornelius-Dodson House (the town’s oldest home), the 1913 calaboose jail from nearby Hermleigh and the old Dermott School built during the 1920s.