Mississippi native J. W. McGill and his wife Lydia Abell McGill raised two sons, James Claude McGill and H. Frank McGill, who attended school in Flatonia, Fayette County, Texas. Claude established small ranches in Fayette and Nueces counties in 1904, and in 1911 he and Frank formed a partnership that led to their purchase of the Santa Rosa Ranch in Kenedy County in 1916. Frank married Annie Lake in 1905 and Claude married Eva Rowland in 1922, and both families settled in Alice, Texas. The brothers helped organize Jim Wells County, were active in the Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, and became prominent south Texas ranchers and noted experts in the cattle business; Claude served as the association's vice-president in 1935 and Frank served as president in 1936. Frank built this structure in 1941 for the family ranching operations, and family tradition holds that its design was patterned after San Antonio's Alamo Museum, which had impressed him during a 1940 visit. The building exhibits Greek influences and features a distinctive corbelled stone parapet. In 1975 the McGill brothers' heirs donated the building to the South Texas Museum Corporation.