SNYDER, Texas (AP) - The Depot has reached the end of the line.
“We felt like we’ve done everything we can, already,” said Drew Bullard, chairman of the Scurry County Historical Commission. “We went through a very intensive process and we just couldn’t get it done.”
The Abilene Reporter-News reports in 2011 the Snyder Santa Fe Depot was listed on Preservation Texas’ roster of Most Endangered Places in the Lone Star State. It was the building’s centennial anniversary, having been designed by celebrated architect Louis Singleton Curtiss, who also helped design the Tarrant County Courthouse.
Curtiss was commissioned to create similar depots in Lubbock, Post and Sweetwater. Of those, only the depot in Post remains standing, having been converted into the Chamber of Commerce office.
But Snyder’s depot hasn’t been so fortunate.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, the owner of the building, has used it as a storage site since the depot closed to passenger traffic in the late 1960s. Last year, the depot was targeted for demolition by the railroad which considers it a liability.
“They want it moved,” Bullard said. “Even if we could do the impossible and get it some money, it would take hundreds of thousand dollars to renovate it and maintain it.”
In October 2016, the railroad filed a permit to tear it down, a motion which set off a storm of activity in Snyder.
At that time Bullard and Paula Hatfield, the vice chairwoman of the Scurry County Historical Commission, helped organize a rally to save the depot. The demolition was put on hold and for a time, it appeared the building would live on.
A concerned benefactor, William Osborn, had stepped up to move the depot to a new home in Austin where it would join other historical buildings as sort of an event center.
“He was pretty confident at the time, he’d gotten the blueprints and he’d already done a bunch of research into moving it,” Bullard said. “But I talked to him just the other day.”
Made of reinforced concrete covered glazed in terra cotta tiles, Bullard was told that Osborn’s engineers had assessed that given the weight of the building and the bridges it would have to travel from Snyder to Austin, there was no way the depot could survive the trip.
The depot was built to last, but it wasn’t built to travel.
“They would have to cut it into eight pieces in order to get it there and that would really cause it to crumble,” Bullard remarked. “He said, ’I can’t do it.’ Then I guess he told the railroad that, and they sent out the demolition order again.”
Nobody knows the timetable for when the building might come down. But the destruction of its historical presence seems inevitable now.
“I feel like we’ve run the good race, we’ve tried everything we could,” Hatfield said. “We were thankful for Mr. Osborn when he stepped up. He wanted our community to try and save it, to keep and use it here in our community.
“After we had exhausted all of those avenues, after we talked to all the entities that might or could or should, no one could help us. No one could step up with the amount of money it was going to take.”
Daniel Schlegel, Jr., the executive director of the Scurry County Museum, is hoping some of the architectural distinctions of the building might be preserved. But if not that, at least the memories of its role in Snyder.
“We’re trying to work with the appropriate people to see what we can save,” he said. “We’re also hoping people in the community might have some memorabilia from when they worked or came here, or maybe from their parents or grandparents, because we have very little train history in the museum.”
Hearing of the depot’s imminent demise, visitors have begun showing up to pay their last respects, take a photograph in front of it, or simply pay tribute to the memories of their ancestors who first set foot in Snyder after leaving this station.
Tim Ballard used to live here before moving to Colorado, but he didn’t give the depot much thought whenever he would pass by it. Now visiting his aunt Sheila McCormack and grandmother Geraldine Greene, he wanted to see the station after hearing it might not be there the next time he returns.
“My grandfather and his sister came here when they were 13, that would have been 1936,” he said. “This was the depot that they came into, this was how they got to Snyder.”
The pair had arrived from either Kentucky or Tennessee, nobody was quite sure which state.
“Their daddy was already here and their mother had passed away,” Greene recalled. “That was a long way for two kids that age.”
Ballard took in the image of the depot now, and let his imagination take flight.
“Think of all that terra cotta when it was new, what it would have looked like. That was probably pretty to see,” he said.
He shook his head, he understood the liability question even though the building had solidly weathered all manner of natural and manmade obstacles for more than a century. Even in disrepair, it evoked a solid presence.
“It’s kind of odd, sad,” Ballard mused. “I don’t understand why they couldn’t just fence it, put a plaque up or something, and just leave it?”
“It’s just going to be a blank,” said McCormack. “Weeds are going to grow up here, that’s what happens when you tear down buildings. Weeds take over.”
Weeds. Not the legacy most community’s hope for.
___
Information from: Abilene Reporter-News, https://www.reporternews.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.