Name: Borger, Texas
Address: Borger, TX

When the Texas Rangers Cleaned Up 'Booger Town' RoadyGoat

In its first year, Borger was known as 'Booger Town,' and it earned the name. The streets you're driving on now were the scene of open lawlessness, controlled by a crime boss named 'Two-Gun Dick' Herwig. His syndicate ran everything—bootlegging, gambling, prostitution—and the local sheriff's department was on his payroll. Murders were a weekly, sometimes daily, occurrence. In the spring of nineteen twenty-seven, Governor Daniel Moody sent in the Texas Rangers, led by Captains Frank Hamer and Tom Hickman. They seized stills and slot machines, made around fifty arrests, and drove a good many undesirables out of town. It steadied the place for a while, but it didn't break the syndicate's grip—the crooked officials stayed in office, and the crime crept right back through the rest of the decade. The reckoning didn't come until nineteen twenty-nine. On September eighteenth of that year, District Attorney John Holmes was assassinated, and ten days later Governor Moody declared martial law and sent in the Texas National Guard under General Jacob Wolters. This time the cleanup was total: the sheriff, the mayor, the city commission, and the entire police department were forced out, raids ran around the clock, and every illegal still in town was shut down. By the middle of October, it was over. It was a scene straight out of the Old West, but it happened here, in the late nineteen-twenties, transforming Borger from a criminal den into a civil town.

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Borger, TX RoadyGoat

Borger is home to the world's largest inland petrochemical complexes. Major companies operating in the area include Chevron-Phillips Chemical Company, which produces specialty chemicals, and Solvay, which manufactures RYTON PPS plastics. Phillips 66 Petroleum Company processes crude oil and natural gas liquids, while Agrium produces nitrogen fertilizer in its Borger plant. These facilities highlight Borger's significance in the petroleum and chemical industries.

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Borger, TX RoadyGoat

The city was named for businessman Asa Philip "Ace" Borger, a key figure in its early development. He not only established this town but also the county seat of Stinnett and several other communities in Texas and Oklahoma. The boomtown era also attracted notable, albeit notorious, figures.

Borger - Boomtown Under Martial Law

1926

Founded in 1926 after oil was discovered in the Panhandle field. Borger became so lawless that the Texas Rangers occupied the town in 1929 and the state placed it under martial law.

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Borger, Asa Phillip

1926

Asa Phillip (Ace) Borger, town builder, was born to Phillip and Minnie Ann (West) Borger on April 12, 1888, on the family farm near Carthage, Missouri. His father, a veterinarian, died when Ace was six, and the Borger children were raised by their mother and two grandmothers. Borger attended school in Carthage and graduated from business college. Around 1907 he married a classmate, Elizabeth Willoughby. The couple spent their first years in a rented farmhouse near Carthage, where Borger opened a lumberyard; they had three children. Borger began his career as a town promoter when World War I broke out in Europe. In 1915 he and his younger brother Lester Andrew (Pete) sold real estate in the mining town of Picher, Oklahoma, in the center of valuable lead and zinc deposits. Much lead was produced from Picher for the war effort. In 1917 the Borgers, in company with the noted wildcatter Tom Slick, laid out the oil town of Slick near Bristow, Oklahoma. At each town the Borgers and their associates built hotels, filling stations, and lumberyards, sold real estate, and pushed for the building of railroad lines to the sites. In 1922 they successfully launched Cromwell, Oklahoma, as a boomtown. Though Borger and his family maintained a home for a time in each of these towns, he continued to use Carthage as his main base. Borger became interested in the discovery of the Panhandle oilfield. Early in 1926, after personally checking out the reports, he purchased 240 acres from rancher John Frank Weatherly at fifty dollars an acre. He next obtained a grant from Texas secretary of state Emma Grigsby Meharg to organize the Borger Townsite Company, with capital stock of $10,000 divided into 100 shares of $100 each. In addition to Borger himself, the company's stockholders included C. C. Horton of the Gulf Oil Company and John R. Miller, an old friend from Oklahoma boom days who became the new town's first mayor. The company proceeded to lay out the town and opened the sale of lots on March 8, 1926. By the end of that first day, it had grossed between $60,000 and $100,000, and after six months Borger sold out completely, for more than a million dollars. He established a lumberyard in the town named for him and opened its first bank. Often he took out full-page ads in area papers promoting settlement in Borger and other oil-rich sites throughout West Texas and eastern New Mexico in which he had bought an interest. He also owned a string of Panhandle wheat elevators and 19,000 acres of farmland in Hansford County. In 1927 Ace and Pete Borger, in association with Albert S. Stinnett , established the towns of Stinnett and Gruver and were influential in making Stinnett the Hutchinson county seat. In 1929 Borger built a spacious two-story family home, the first brick residence in Borger. From the start he had set aside building sites for churches and schools. His wife, Elizabeth, became active in community affairs; her love for beauty and culture was reflected in the antiques with which she decorated their home. Visiting dignitaries were lavishly entertained there. Borger's overt generosity with friends and acquaintances caused hard feelings among certain of the town's populace, however, particularly Arthur Huey, the Hutchinson county treasurer. Huey's dislike for Borger intensified after the Borger State Bank, which Borger had established in June 1930 with himself as president and his son Phillip as vice president, failed, causing a minor panic among local businessmen and small depositors. The elder Borger was later convicted of receiving deposits in the insolvent bank and assessed a two-year prison term, a judgment that he appealed. Meanwhile, Huey was jailed for embezzlement and reportedly asked Borger to help bail him out. When Borger refused, Huey made threats against his life. On August 31, 1934, Borger was getting his mail at the city post office when, according to witnesses, Huey walked in with a Colt .45, shouted obscenities, and shot him fiv

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McIlroy, Sherman D.

1919

Sherman D. (Tex) McIlroy, pioneer oilman, was born in Randolph County, Arkansas, in 1871, the third of the eleven children of William and Mary C. McIlroy. In 1886, when he was fifteen, the family moved to Hood County, Texas, and settled on a farm near Tolar, ten miles west of Granbury. There he remained until 1889, when he left for Fresno, California. By 1897 McIlroy had followed the lure of the gold rush to the Klondike and gone to Dawson City, Yukon Territory, where he spent several exciting years. In 1900 he married Katharyn Byrd, a native of San Antonio, at Hot Springs, Arkansas, and took her back to Dawson City. They had two daughters, the elder said to be the first White child born in the Yukon. Later the McIlroys moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, where they remained in the gold fields until 1914. McIlroy, who acquired his nickname in Alaska, then brought his family back to Texas. They settled in Amarillo, where McIlroy joined his brother, White W. McIlroy, in the meat and grocery business. In December 1918 excitement over the Masterson oil discovery well swept the Panhandle , and early in 1919 the McIlroy brothers formed the Dixon Creek Oil Company as a joint-stock firm and set out to take advantage of the prospects, despite their total lack of experience in the oil business. After securing some prospective leases on the Smith Ranch in southern Hutchinson County, they drilled their first well, Smith-Capers No. 1, which came in during June 1922 at only thirty barrels a day. Nevertheless, the McIlroys incorporated the company in 1924 to raise funds and continued to drill. Henry A. and Millard C. Nobles were among the principal stockholders. In March 1925 the Dixon Creek, or Smith No. 1, was brought in and produced 400 barrels a day. In December of that year the No. 2 well on the same lease came in at 3,000 barrels a day. Tex McIlroy then decided to try to increase production by deepening Smith No. 1. On January 11, 1926, after being drilled only an additional two feet, the well blew in at 10,000 barrels a day, an unprecedented success that touched off a boom and led to the founding of Borger. After completing Smith No. 1, the Dixon Creek Oil Company brought in a number of successful producers, most of them on the Smith Ranch leases. This made McIlroy one of the dominant independent operators during the boom's early days. To use the large volume of casinghead gas produced from company wells, he also erected one of the Panhandle's first natural gas plants. Later, McIlroy expanded his operations to the West Pampa Field in western Gray County, where he drilled the second producer. There the company eventually brought in eighty-seven producing wells on leases totalling 1,800 acres; at one time the wells were producing more than 20,000 barrels of oil a day. In all, the McIlroy brothers organized three successful independent regional oil companies between 1919 and 1932. During that time, Tex McIlroy handled most of the oil properties. In an era of shady stock deals and questionable business practices, he became known for his honesty, his determination to keep his word, and his charities. The Amarillo Community Chest, the Maverick Club, and several small churches were among the organizations the McIlroys supported. In 1930 the McIlroys merged their Dixon Creek and Cockrell-McIlroy companies as the Dixon Creek Oil and Refining Company. They purchased a small refinery at Kingsmill and operated it mostly on company production. In 1932 the McIlroy brothers sold the company to the King Royalty (later King Oil) Company of Wichita Falls. At that sale, the corporation returned over 700 percent to investors. The McIlroy Oil Company, managed several years longer by White McIlroy, paid dividends of well over 600 percent. Although he was one of the largest stockholders in the King Oil firm, Tex retired from active oil development after the 1932 sale. He bought a large cattle ranch in the vicinity of his old Hood County home and developed it into a

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Fort Smith - Santa Fe Trail

1840

Josiah Gregg (1806-50) blazed the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail in 1840 as a shorter route between the U.S. and New Mexico. He crossed this site on March 17, 1840, while returning to Arkansas from a trading expedition to Santa Fe and Chihuahua. In a book, "Commerce of the Prairies", published in 1844, Gregg recommended the new route, which paralleled the Canadian River. Over 2,000 California-bound gold seekers traveled it in 1849. The largest wagon train of that year was accompanied by U.S. Army troops commanded by Captain Randolph B. Marcy (1812-87), who made a survey of the trail for a proposed national wagon road. Marcy's party crossed this site on June 9, 1849. The extensive use of the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail in the early 1850s caused it to be considered as a favorable route for a transcontinental railroad. Lt. A. W. Whipple of the Army Corps of Engineer surveyed a possible route in the summer of 1853. By the late 1850s, emigrants were traveling a more southern road through El Paso, which was eventually to become the southern railroad route, and the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail fell into disuse and was finally abandoned. In many places on the Plains, the wagon ruts are still visible in the undisturbed prairie sod. (1974)

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Gulf Burnett No. 2 (Carson County Oil Discovery Well)

1921

(1 mile southeast) The Panhandle's first oil well, Gulf Burnett No. 2, was struck by the Gulf Production Company on May 2, 1921, on the 6666 Ranch of S. B. Burnett. The prediction of oil in this area by U.S. geologists in 1904 and the discovery of natural gas nearby in 1918 induced Amarillo businessmen to finance Burnett No. 2. Though the first oil was of poor quality, major oil discoveries in the nearby Borger and South Pampa fields in 1926 spurred a regional oil boom and established the Panhandle as one of Texas' richest petroleum areas. Carson County has produced 150 million barrels of oil since 1921. (1993)

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Borger, Texas

Music in Borger

Songs About Borger

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Borger

History of Borger

When the Texas Rangers Cleaned Up 'Booger Town' RoadyGoat

Borger, TX RoadyGoat

Borger, TX RoadyGoat

Borger - Boomtown Under Martial Law

Borger, Asa Phillip

McIlroy, Sherman D.

Fort Smith - Santa Fe Trail

Gulf Burnett No. 2 (Carson County Oil Discovery Well)

Things to Do in Borger

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