The White Deer Land Building housed the property records of the White Deer Land Company, which operated from 1886 to 1957 and was one of the strongest commercial influences in the settlement of the Texas Panhandle. Organized from the wreckage of the bankrupt Francklyn Land and Cattle Company, whose chief stockholder was Lord Rosebery, Prime Minister of England, the company developed during widespread British speculation in Texas cattle and ranching in the 1870s and 1880s. At its beginning, the London-financed and Wall Street-based trust owned 631,000 acres, an area equal to the state of Rhode Island, in Gray, Roberts, Carson, and Hutchinson Counties. Managed by George Tyng, T.D. Hobart, C.P. Buckler, and M.K. Brown, it 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. After oil was discovered 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. The building also housed a Masonic Lodge, post office, medical and dental offices, and religious services.