White Deer Land Company Building
a.k.a. White Deer Land Museum
116 S. Cuyler, Pampa, TXThe White Deer Land Co. Building (1916) in Pampa, TX, served as the third Pampa office built by the White Deer Land Co., the region's primary landholder, and developer from 1886 through 1957. The building meets Criterion A, in the area of Settlement, for its associations with the settlement of a four-county region in the Texas panhandle. The building also meets Criterion C, in the Area of Architecture, as an excellent example of an eclectic 2-part commercial block, and as the only known project jointed attributed to Amarillo architects William Raymond Kaufman and Joseph Champ Berry.
Native Americans may have lived in the east-central Texas panhandle 20,000 years ago. The region's prehistoric Plains Apaches gave way to the Apaches, who were in turn displaced by the Comanches and Kiowas. Spanish exploration of the area began after Francisco Vasquez de Coronado advanced into the Panhandle in 1541 in search of gold. Army engineer J. W. Abert mapped the area near Hoover and Lefors in 1845, followed by an expedition led by Randolph B. Marcy with George B. McClellan in 1852, and the arrival soon after that of buffalo hunters and traders. The army removed Native Americans to Indian Territory after the Red River War of 1874. The federal government established Fort Elliott in 1875 in Wheeler County after the first cantonment settled in eastern Gray County earlier that year.
Ranchers settled the area as early as 1877 and were soon followed by land syndicates which established vast ranches. In 1882, the Francklyn Land and Cattle Co. purchased approximately 637,000 acres in Gray, Carson, Hutchinson, and Roberts Counties. The Francklyn Land was managed by Col. B. B. Groom and his son, who established the Diamond F Ranch, with headquarters on White Deer Creek. In 1886, English bondholders foreclosed on the land, and organized the White Deer Land Co., with George Tyng acting as the first manager. Lord Rosebery of London (at one time Prime Minister of England) served as the principal bondholder with Andrew Kingsmill of London as the banker. Because foreigners could not own land in Texas, two New York lawyers, Frederic de P. Foster and Cornelius C. Cuyler held the legal title. The company located its office in a log house on the ranch.
In 1888, the Southern Kansas Railroad extended its line through the Panhandle toward Amarillo, through present-day Pampa. Thomas Lane, a telegraph operator, manned a section station at the rail switch and became the first postmaster after the White Deer Land Co. applied for a post office in 1892. The name of the station changed from Glasgow to Sutton, and finally to Pampa, so named because Tyng saw a similarity to the flat terrain of the Argentine pampas (plains) he had once visited.
The W.DL. Co. relocated to a log house southwest of White Deer, and then to a farmhouse southeast of White Deer, before constructing its own building at 318 W. Atchison, Pampa, in 1891.' In 1902, Gray County was organized and Pampa was platted, and the land owners set about to promote the area. In 1906 the White Deer Land Co. built its second Pampa office building at 124 S. Cuyler. The company built a demonstration house near the railroad to display homegrown products to prospective land buyers passing through on the train. The company surveyed the land, laid out farms and ranches, built water wells, strung hundreds of miles of wire fence, offered $150,000 in loans to farmers to buy seed wheat, and extended credit when times were hard.?
When oil was discovered on the Burnett ranch in Carson County in 1921, the WDLCo. had 20,000 acres of land remaining, and they reserved one-half of the mineral rights on land they sold. By 1957 most of the land and lots were sold, and the corporation was liquidated by paying cash to the bondholders and assigning to them a pro-rata part of the minerals. M.K. Brown was the successful bidder for the remaining real estate, which included the office building. He and Clotille Thompson, his secretary, founded the museum. Complying with a request made by Brown before his death in 1964, the M.K.Brown Foundation developed the museum (opened in December 1970) and deeded it to Gray County in 1971.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.