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Museum Mementoes Real Audio by Eloise Lane
The doorway on the south side of the foyer of White Deer
Land Museum is flanked by boards carved with initials and other markings made many years ago.
These boards were part of the log house that served as headquarters for the Diamond F Ranch, operated by the
Francklyn Land and Cattle Company from 1882 to 1886. The house, about twenty miles northwest of Pampa, was built of logs from cottonwood trees that grew along White Deer Creek in Hutchinson County.
In 1886, the Diamond F Ranch became the property of White Deer Lands. In 1910 and 1911, Harry Byers Price of Reading, Kansas, bought 44 sections of land from White Deer Lands and became the owner of the log house
headquarters.
In 1911, Willis Davidson Price, Sr., son of H.B. Price, moved to the area of White Deer Creek to oversee his father's ranch. At one time he and his wife, Margaret
(Chatterton) Price, lived in a two-room frame- house that stood next to the log house.
W.D. Price, Jr. (Buddy) and Ida Ruth (Taylor) Price, who now live at the Flying W Ranch headquarters near the
location of the log house, donated these boards to White Deer Land Museum in 1986. It seems appropriate that these boards from the first headquarters of the White Deer
Land Company are now housed in the last headquarters building of the company, which discontinued operations in 1957.
Booklets which give more details about the log house and
its owners are now available at White Deer Land Museum. Visiting hours are from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. every day except Monday.
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