It became significant for the Resors' employment of notable architects, include Mies van der Rohe, and the wide variety of celebrity visitors it attracted.

The younger Stanley's enthusiasm about his experience led his father to buy 400 acres (160 ha) of land, sight unseen.

To begin expanding the ranch the Resors hired architect Paul Colborn of New Canaan, Connecticut, to design a new main house.

The White Cabin was designed by Philip Goodwin, who worked with Edward Durrell Stone on the Museum of Modern Art, and was on the board of directors of MOMA along with Helen Lansdowne Resor.

Soon after, Helen asked architect Mark Peters, a relative of one of the younger Resor's school classmates, to "design a building in the style of Le Corbusier".

The dining room, as it was called, was to span the mill stream, the arm of the Snake River that fed the power turbine, resting on four concrete piers.

As a result of internal divisions within the MOMA board, which was divided between a faction led by Abby Rockefeller who supported Stone and Goodwin for the new MOMA building and a faction led by Barr and Resor who supported Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Helen Resor hired Mies to complete the dining room, his first project in the United States.

In summer 1937 the Resors met Mies in Paris, and he accompanied them back across the Atlantic for his first trip to the United States, stopping in Chicago before going on the Wyoming.

Mies stayed in the White Cabin, sharing it for a time with artist Grant Wood, a figurative painter of American themes.

[4] Back in Chicago, Mies developed elaborate plans for a two-story building connecting the banks of the stream using long floor-to-ceiling windows.

By March 1938, Mies was returning to Germany on the RMS Queen Mary when he received notice from Stanley Resor that the project was canceled, citing "business conditions".

Whatever the outcome of the design work at the Resors' ranch, the project played a significant role in Mies' departure from Germany just prior to the outbreak of war with a regime that was hostile to Modernist architecture.