Victoria Regional History Center

George Tyng was born May 12, 1842 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His parents were Charles and Anna Amelia (McAlpine) Tyng. He was educated in Hanover, Germany, and spent several years in various business ventures in South America and Cuba. In 1869 he married Elena Carillo Thompson in Santa Barbara, California. They had three sons: George McAlpine, Charles, and Francis.

George Tyng's numerous occupational interests took him throughout North America. In the early 1870s he and his family moved to Arizona where he served as a U. S. Marshall in Arizona Territory from 1874 to 1877. In 1877 he purchased the Arizona Sentinel newspaper in Yuma. Three years later he sold the newspaper and moved to Mexico City to manage the Mexico business interests of the Tehuantepec Inter-Ocean Railroad Company, which he helped to organize. During this time, while on a business trip to Florida, he travelled through Victoria and, in about 1885, the Tyng family established a home in Victoria and a cattle ranch within the county.

From 1886 to 1903, Tyng managed the White Deer Lands Trust Company in the Texas Panhandle. The company shipped large numbers of cattle under the Diamond F Ranch brand. In 1888, the Santa Fe Railroad was constructed through the area that George Tyng named Pampa, after the pampas grasslands he had seen in South America. Tyng laid out the town and promoted development of farm settlements in the area and innovations such as windmills and fences. These innovations earned him the designation "father" of the Panhandle.

Tyng held mining interests in Mexico, Honduras, Arizona, and Canada. In 1902, he and two of his sons, Charles and Francis, established a lead and silver mining operation in American Fork Canyon in Alta, Utah. In 1904, they discovered new veins of silver and lead carbonate.

George Tyng died on January 19, 1906 when his office building near the Utah mine shaft was crushed by an avalanche of snow. He was buried on Kalamazoo Flat in a lone grave in American Fork Canyon.

Contents of George Tyng Papers: Correspondence 1867~1904; Business letters and documents pertaining to: Tehuantepec Inter-Ocean Railroad; White Deer Lands Trust Company: New York and Honduras Rosario Mining Co.; Copper Creek Mine; Silver Islet Mining & Land Co.; Miscellaneous business interests; Photographs.