The Frying Pan Ranch was founded in 1881 by Amarillo pioneer Henry Sanborn and J.F. Glidden, the inventor of barbed wire. Their partnership was dissolved in 1894, and Glidden sold the ranch to his son-in-law, W.H. Bush, who later endowed the free library and park in his birthplace of Martinsburg, New York. Bush was also a patron of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Amarillo Public Library. His gift of land in 1900 established the site of St. Anthony's Hospital, and the round up house built in 1926 was a present to his daughter, Emeline, on her sixteenth birthday.