White Deer Land Building

Duane's take

Here's my telling of the official marker for the White Deer Land Building, standing in Gray County, Texas. Now, if you want a story about land, about truly staggering, jaw-dropping amounts of land, pull over, settle in, and let me tell you about a building that sits quiet on the Texas Panhandle holding secrets that reach all the way to London. The building itself went up in 1916.

But the story it houses is older and considerably stranger than that. It all starts with wreckage. The Francklyn Land and Cattle Company had gone bankrupt, and when it fell, it fell hard.

Among the wreckage, though, somebody saw opportunity. Out of that collapse rose the White Deer Land Company, organized and ready for business. And who had been the chief stockholder of the old Francklyn outfit?

Only Lord Rosebery, Prime Minister of England. That's right. Panhandle dirt, Prime Minister of England.

Texas has a way of pulling in the whole world. This was no coincidence. The eighteen-seventies and eighties were a time of widespread British speculation in Texas cattle and ranching, and the money flowing into the Panhandle wasn't coming from around the corner, it was London-financed, Wall-Street-based, and arriving with grand ambitions.

At its very beginning, the White Deer Land Company owned six hundred and thirty-one thousand acres. Six hundred and thirty-one thousand. That's land equal in area to the entire state of Rhode Island, spread across Gray, Roberts, Carson, and Hutchinson Counties.

Let that sit with you a moment the next time you feel like your backyard is a decent size. The company didn't just sit on that land. Managed by George Tyng, T.

D. Hobart, C. P.

Buckler, and M. K. Brown, they went to work.

They surveyed the land. They laid out farms and ranches. They sank wells.

They built hundreds of miles of wire fence. They aided civic projects. This was an operation with reach.

And when the disastrous drouth of 1910 hit, and it was disastrous, the marker makes no bones about that, the White Deer Land Company made one hundred thousand dollars in loans available to local farmers so they could buy wheat seed. That's the kind of move that keeps a community alive when the sky refuses to cooperate. Then came nineteen twenty-one.

Oil was discovered on White Deer land. And here's where the company showed it had not gotten this far by being naive, they had retained half of the mineral rights on remaining land sold. Half.

When that oil came up, the firm made vast gains. Decades of patient dealing, paying off. The White Deer Land Company ran from eighteen eighty-six all the way to nineteen fifty-seven, when it was finally liquidated.

Seventy-one years of shaping the Texas Panhandle, end to end. And all that time, this building, erected in 1916, housing those property records, was doing its own quiet work. It's held a Masonic Lodge.

A post office. Medical offices, dental offices. It's accommodated religious services.

One building, wearing a lot of hats, the way Panhandle buildings tend to do. So next time you pass through Gray County and spot that structure, know that it's holding more than records. It's holding the paper trail of British lords, Wall Street money, six hundred thousand acres of Texas sky, and a community that weathered drouth and came out the other side.

That building has earned its place on the road.

What the marker says

Erected in 1916. Houses property records of the White Deer Land Company (1886-1957), one of the strongest commercial influences in settlement of the Texas Panhandle. Organized from wreckage of the bankrupt Francklyn Land and Cattle Company--whose chief stockholder was Lord Rosebery, Prime Minister of England--the White Deer Company developed during widespread British speculation in Texas cattle and ranching, 1870s-80s. At its beginning, the London-financed and Wall-Street-based trust owned land equal in area to the state of Rhode Island. These 631,000 acres lay in Gray, Roberts, Carson, and Hutchinson Counties. The company (managed by George Tyng, T. D. Hobart, C. P. Buckler, and M. K. Brown) surveyed the land, laid out farms and ranches, sank wells, built hundreds of miles of wire fence, and aided civic projects. During the disastrous drouth of 1910, it made available to local farmers $100,000 in loans to buy wheat seed. Upon the discovery of oil on White Deer land in 1921, the firm made vast gains by retaining half of the mineral rights on remaining land sold. It was liquidated in 1957. This building has also housed a Masonic Lodge, post office, medical and dental offices, and has accommodated religious services. (1970)