[2] The Villa was built in 1926 by oil magnate Waite Phillips who used it to oversee his 300,000 acres (120,000 ha) cattle ranch in northeast New Mexico.

Phillips donated the Villa, along with 91,538 acres (37,044 ha) of land and the Philtower office building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the Boy Scouts in 1941, supplementing a 1938 gift of 35,857 acres (14,511 ha) that had created the Philturn Rocky Mountain Scout camp, near Cimarron, New Mexico.

A small window on the second floor that looks towards the ranch was added to the house by Phillips after construction was completed.

A display window on the stairs between the first and second floor shows a landscape of saguaro cacti and a wagon being pulled by horses.

In fact, wagons on the Santa Fe Trail were pulled by oxen, and there are no saguaro cacti in New Mexico.