Email Museum

White Deer Land Museum

116 S. Cuyler

Pampa, TX 79065

George Tyng left White Deer Lands in 1903

On March 8, 1903, the Miami Cheif printed George Tyng's farewell letter to "his people" in the area of White Deer Lands. Many old timers kept copies of this letter as priceless possessions because it expressed so well the personality and character of the man who wrote it.

FAREWELL

I had intended before leaving here, to devote a couple of weeks to making farewell visits to the people of these counties, who have always treated me so kindly since May, 1886. Circumstances compel me to forego that pleasure and to take this method of expressing my appreciation and of wishing them continued prosperity.

During the seventeen years I have attended no social gatherings, made no social visits, nor amused myself in this part of Texas; but have stuck to my employer's business and have acquired no private property or interests of my own.  This has not been from pride, or moroseness, or want of confidence in the country. Far to the contrary.

This people is my people; the kind I like; the kind I have been with from boyhood; with this difference, that the hard times of a few years ago weeded them out and left here a more select community than is usual in a frontier country, of as fine a people as anyone could wish to live with. I am not seeking votes and I fear I may not see you all again; so this is not "taffy," but is only a fact that a great many other people have also noticed.

This country has a bright future and I have often wanted to share in it. But it seemed right to let my employer always feel that his business here was not neglected through my using time that he was paying for, on any private business or amusement of my own.

My temper is quick and is apt to lend more energy than courtesy to my language. Where it has hurt any good man's feelings, I beg him to accept my regrets and to forgive and forget. I have (thank God!) two or three enemies, of the kind a man ought to have, with whom I should like to converse a little before going. But we all have to give up some little pleasures.

The property in my care here has always been respected, without recourse to Courts or Rangers. The good will of a good community is the finest of protection, and nowhere on Earth are just rights better respected than here.

In seventeen years no one has, in word or tone, shown me even any disrespect that a reasonable man could resent.

Though no one has expected me, a hired man, to grant favors at my employer's expense, yet favors without number have been done to me and much help voluntarily given. I have a good memory,

Last year, in circulating a petition (to organize Gray County and to select a county seat), I went around to our people's houses for the first time; it was just like visiting kinfolks.

Now, with all that experience, how could I help taking away with me the warmest kind of friendship for you folks?

I do take it and sincerely desire God's choicest blessings on you.

Good bye.

George Tyng

Pampa, Texas, March 8th 1903

Tyng left White Deer Lands for several reasons. He was disheartened by his failure to secure the county seat for Pampa. He and Russell Benedict, Foster's assistant, had differed on the method of selling land. His wife was in poor health and he felt that he should provide more financial security for his family which consisted of his wife, Elena, and their three sons, Charles, George McAlpine and Francis Carillo.

Tyng had been planning to return to his mining interests when he left White Deer Lands. On January 3, 1902, he was listed as one of the locators of a claim in American Fork Canyon, Utah, twenty miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

That summer he purchased the Kalamazoo claims near the Miller mine, an old lead-silver property. He put his youngest son, Francis, in charge of a crew at the Wyoming Tunnel there. The Tyngs called this operation the Arizona Lease.

The mine was, just below the top of Miller Hill, a 10,000-foot peak surrounded by rugged canyons and high mountains. Just above the mine, from a ridge between two snow-capped crags of the Wasatch Mountains, it was possible to see fifty miles in several directions.

A few miners lived at Dutchman Flat, two miles away down a steep trail. American Fork, the nearest town, was 18 miles to the southwest over a rough, locally owned toll road down a long abandoned railroad.

After Tyng joined Francis at the mine, the two men spent the winter in a tiny cabin above the upper tunnel, with two of its walls cut from solid rock.

The work at the mine was so expensive and discouraging that Tyng had about decided to leave when his lease expired at the end of 1904. But one day a miner, working on a car track, drove his pick into a high spot in the floor and rich lead carbonate sparkled in the light of his candle.  A few days' work revealed a fortune in silver and lead. The rich, soft carbonate flowed into loading chutes and seemed to occur in limitless quantities.

On November 19, 1904, Tyng wrote to his good friend, Jesse Wynne, at Pampa:

"We had arranged for Francis to go about October 10 to Victoria and take his mother to St. Louis while I intended to pass a few weeks among friends around Pampa, as I dislike crowds and confusion of fairs.

"But about October 1, Francis broke into a large pocket of good ore from which he has been taking over $200.00 a day profit with expectation of continuing until danger of snowslides (avalanches) drives his men out of these high mountains until spring.

"Of course, that has knocked out the St. Louis plan and I have stayed to help him make his preparation for winter.

"I expect to go to New York next week to meet my wife and to get acquainted with our latest daughter-in-law, Charlie's wife. I shall be so anxious to get back to Francis that I shall be unable to go or come via Pampa. But though we may not see you until next year, we remember our friends and often talk of you all."

 While in New York, Tyng obtained an extension of his lease. Back in Utah, he erected a new boardinghouse and other mine buildings. Francis,(for whom Francis Street in Pampa was named) enrolled for a term at the Colorado School of Mines to study mining methods.

Tyng paid from seventy-five cents to one dollar above the prevailing daily wage and hired the very best cooks in order to attract good miners to the isolation of Miller Hill.