Immigrants from Czechosovakia settled in this area in the 1880s, and the community, first known as Sebesta or Sebesta's Corners after an early family, was renamed Snook in the 1890s in honor of Caldwell postmaster John Snook. By then the community cemetery already existed on sandy ground better suited to hand-dug graves than the surrounding Blackland clay. Its first burial was Vlasta Pitner in 1885, and the land was formally set aside through an 1899 purchase. Maintained by a cemetery association since the early 1900s, it was first established for people of Czech descent but later opened to Germans and other immigrants who moved to the area. It became the final resting place for veterans of American conflicts dating to the Civil War and remained a link to generations of local settlers and the area's early Czech community.