White Deer Land Museum

White Deer Land Museum

The White Deer Land Museum, is located in a two-story red brick building at 112 South Cuyler Street in the center of the small city of Pampa, Texas. The museum occupies the third location (1916) of the former White Deer Land Company. The building has its original tin ceilings, tile floors, and furniture. Over the years, the museum has expaned into adjacent buildings with new connecting corridors.

The White Deer Land Company was organized from the bankrupt Francklyn Land and Cattle Company, the chief stockholder of which was Archibald Philip Primrose (1847-1929), the fifth Earl of Roseberry, the prime minister of England from 1894 to 1895.. At the time in the 1870s and 1880s, British investors were speculating heavily in lands and cattle in Texas and much of the American West.. The White Deer Company was managed by T. D. Hobart, George Tyng (c. 1839-1906), Cecil Payne Buckler (1885-1967), and Montagu K. Brown (1878-1964). The four managers surveyed the holdings, laid out farms and ranches, sank wells, and built hundreds of miles of barbed wire fencing. White Deer owned land equal in area to the state of Rhode Island, 631,000 acres in Carson, Gray, Hutchinson, and Roberts counties. In the drought of 1910, the company 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 retained half of the mineral rights on land sold. The company was liquidated in 1957. This building also formerly housed a Masonic lodge, post office, medical and dental offices, and has accommodated religious services as well.

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday in the summer; Tuesday through Sunday in the winter; the hours are 1 to 4 p.m. It is one of the few remaining museums in the Texas Panhandle with guided tours. The exhibits, which depict life in the Texas Panhandle in the late 1800's and early 1900's, include a large Native American arrowhead and artifact collection, history of the Red River War (1874-75), and an archive of historical photos and pioneer era dolls and toys. There is also a reproductions of a barber shop, country store, school room, homestead kitchen, bedroom, and parlor, period clothing, and the restored office of the White Deer Land Company.