Liendo functioned first and foremost as a large commercial cotton plantation, developed on a Mexican-era land grant and built up by planter Leonard Groce, whose mansion, completed around 1853, anchored an estate that relied on the forced labor of roughly 300 enslaved people to produce cotton for regional and export markets. During the Civil War the property's function shifted to military use: a training camp, known as Camp Groce, was established on the grounds to organize and drill Confederate recruits, and the same facility was later used to hold Union prisoners captured at the Battle of Galveston. After the war, federal troops under General George Custer camped on the property during Reconstruction. In 1873 the estate changed function again when sculptor Elisabet Ney and her husband, scientist Edmund Montgomery, purchased it as a working home and farm, residing there while Ney pursued her art career; the couple, inexperienced at agriculture, kept the land in limited farming use for decades. The plantation passed through later owners and was substantially restored and modernized in the 1960s. Today Liendo functions as a working ranch and private historic-house venue: it hosts cattle operations alongside guided tours, weddings, festivals, and living-history and Civil War reenactment events, combining agricultural use with tourism and event hosting on its restored grounds.