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The Borger Boom


from Early Texas Oil; A Photographic History 1866-1936 by Walter Rundell, Jr. Texas A&M University Press, College Station, 1977. P. 209.

"The Dixon Creek Oil and Refining Company opened what was to become the Borger field with its Smith #1 on January 11, 1926. This well began flowing 10,000 barrels daily, a most propitious indication of what was to come. Geologists from major oil companies converged on the site, located near the Canadian River in southern Hutchinson County, forty miles northeast of Amarillo. From Oklahoma came representatives of the Phillips and Marland companies. An enterprising real estate promoter from Tulsa, A. P. (“Ace”) Borger decided that since the site looked destined to become a major oilfield, it should have a town to go with it. He secured a 240-acre tract in February 1926, and named it for himself. His expectations in the field’s future were entirely justified. By September it had 813 producing wells, with a daily output of 165,000 barrels. With wells venting their “waste” gas, as in most other fields, an odor of sour gas fouled the air."

     "The development of Borger had a tremendous impact on Amarillo and the entire economy of the area. In 1920, Amarillo had 15,494 inhabitants, but by January 1927, 53,000 were estimated to be there. From 1925 to 1926, assessed property values leapt from about $29,000,000 to $40,000,000, and bank deposits soared from $10,197,364 to $24,721,782. Amarillo clearly operated as the financial headquarters for the Panhandle’s oil boom.

     "Because of Borger’s isolation, transportation facilities did not exist at the time of the strike. The nearest railroad, the Santa Fe, was in the small town of Panhandle, twenty-three miles to the south. Receiving all the freight for the Borger field, Panhandle recorded a tonnage in 1926 second only to Chicago. In an effort to participate in the boom, the Rock Island Railroad began building a track from Amarillo to Borger. Santa Fe decided to extend its line from Panhandle into Borger, and the two railroads began to race. Since the Santa Fe had a head start, it won, at a cost of $4.5 million.

     "Of the companies that speculated in the Borger field, one decided to stay; the Phillips Petroleum Company. It built a major refinery next to the field, lending stability to the area. Phillips enabled Borger to make the transition from a wide-open boom town to a respectable community. Later Borger acknowledged its indebtedness to the company by naming its junior college after Frank Phillips, the Oklahoma Barber who parlayed a foreclosed mortgage on a filling station into one of the nations major integrated oil companies.

     "The East Texas field opened in 1930, after the depression had begun and as the Prohibition era was winding down. The towns which increased in size were already extant at the time of the strike, so the boom did not hit as hard.



from Oil is King in the Texas Panhandle (In World’s Work Magazine; December 1927) by Edward B. Garnett.

[The opening of the new Seminole oil field in Oklahoma and the Panhandle fields in Texas raised the serious problem of over production.]

"It begins to look as if it were time to remake the American Geographies. The United States is outgrowing its clothes, physically, industrially, and commercially. Maps that only five years ago taught us that the high table land of Texas north of the Great Staked Plains, known as the Panhandle, was only a vast unproductive area where cattle grazed on boundless barren acres, are of no practicable use today. Most of the cattle and big ranches are gone. In their place, almost over night, thriving new cities have sprung up."

     "Forests of oil derricks rise on the once lonesome prairies. Great railroad systems have cut busy branch lines through the old “cow country,” bridging sharp canyons and slow-flowing rivers. Modern paved highways are replacing the old cattle drovers’ trails. Factories, with smokeless chimneys, attract new thousands of workers. Peace and contentment and solitude have gone. In their stead have come power and production and progress—and, of course, undreamed-of prosperity. There is no more magical a story in the nation’s development than this. Industry, long asleep in a great inland empire, has awakened. Power, yielded in abundance from mother earth’s vast storage vaults, has been tapped by man to run the machines of his machine-made civilization.

     "Monster oil and gas fields supply this power to the Panhandle country first; but there is such a superabundance of it that other and greater cities to the east and north soon must benefit, too. Pipelines already are supplying streams of “black gold” to metropolitan centers of the Middle West, to the Mississippi River and farther east. Other pipelines will carry gas, an even better and more economical fuel. In return, of course, the Panhandle country is receiving unimaginable riches.

     "Amarillo, Texas, now a city of 50,000 inhabitants, is the virtual capital of the Panhandle, as it is the nearest town of importance to the new oil and gas fields. Two years ago its population was about 24,000. On all sides handsome new business blocks, young skyscrapers, meet the visitor. One 14-story hotel has been finished and opened at a cost of two million dollars, and another of seventeen stories is being completed. Amarillo already boasts of twenty millionaires—and some of them have many millions each.

     "How do they do it? one asks. Their story is the magic story of oil. Before the big strike in Hutchinson County, near Borger, fifty-two miles northeast of Amarillo, about two years ago, one large ranch-owner had thirty thousand acres of cattle-grazing land. Much of it was on the high prairie, unfenced and part of the open range. Yet he, or his ancestors, had “filed on it” and it was all indisputably his. Then a group of young oil prospectors—still not too proud to be called “wild-catters”—organized a little company, took a lease on one of the rancher’s broad acres, and drilled a well. The well “came in,” making between two and three thousand barrels of oil every twenty-four hours, proving that a great pool of “black gold” was spread out somewhere beneath the surface of this land, and the oil rush to Hutchinson County in the Panhandle was on. Today this rancher’s lands re literally dotted with oil wells, across the heart of the great Borger pools. Can you, therefore, conceive of the wealth that strike has brought to the ranchman who owns—yes, who still owns—those thirty thousand acres? At a conservative estimate, leasing the entire thirty thousand acres at $2000 an acre, he is worth $60,000,000—or, counting one-eighth royalties from all the oil produced on his land, nobody will try to guess how much he is worth. He doesn’t know, himself.

     "These great new overlords of wealth, while quite willing to spend, will spend only wisely and after due thought. One sees no signs of thriftlessness, nor even what may be looked upon as foolish luxuries. A taxicab driver’s experience is a case in point. He told me that he had been in Amarillo for three months, hoping to get employed as a chauffeur in a private family, yet had failed. “Everyone drives his own car here,” he said. “They are too busy to call their chauffeurs, even if they had them.” They, for the most part, are driving their own cars. There is no reckless splurge of wealth.

     "One still hears on every turn in Amarillo the wonderful story of Borger, the town in the heart of the oil field that was founded in February 1926, and visualized as a city by its founder A. P. Borger, of Cromwell, Oklahoma. When oil was found, the town of Borger immediately sprang into being—a typical oil town, with one main street almost two miles long, lined with frame stores and shacks of all descriptions. It became a city almost over night, but still was thirty miles or more from a railroad. The nearest railway line was the Santa Fe, at Panhandle City, some twenty miles east of Amarillo. But the Rock Island, running from Liberal, Kansas, to Dalhart, Texas, passed the new oil field about fifty miles to the west, and immediately a race began between the two competing railroads to build the first line into Borger. The Santa Fe, having the shortest distance to build, was the first to construct its branch line to Borger, named its station Isom, and began operating trains from Panhandle City in October 1926. The Rock Island is completing its line between Liberal and Amarillo, by way of Borger, this year.

     "Yet not even the idle visitors waited for the coming of the railroads to take them to Borger. The town soon gained the reputation of being a wild, “rootin’-tootin’” rip-roarin’, snortin’. Hell-raisin’” place. Perhaps if wealth is attractive, sin is doubly so. Anyway, the rush to Borger soon was on. It continued all during the late spring and summer of 1926 and well into the fall. And now Borger is a thriving city of 25,000 inhabitants.

     "To get to Borger, visitors from the east usually leave the train at Panhandle City, itself a town whose population jumped within six months from 1,500 to almost 8,000. There one rents a motor or climbs on a truck or whatever is available, and sets out for Borger. A winding road over a high, wind-swept prairie leads, finally to a veritable badlands, with rugged bluffs of very red sandstone and a white substance that may be lime. Two hours—for the travel by motor is still very slow along the road constantly cut to pieces by hundreds of heavy trucks—and what has been called America’s largest oil field comes into sight.

     "Rising along the horizon to the north and west are literally hundreds of oil derricks. More and more come into view, as if a race of giants had sprung up in this once inhabited land to erect an artificial forest of queer-looking watch towers. We draw closer, our small car crawling past more trucks, hauling more pipes or casings for still more oil wells. Yet, slow as our progress is, we drive on. We pass more oil wells blackened and greasy; more giant trucks and pipelines; young refineries and casing-head plants; and a great gas works, where what is called “carbon black” is smudged from the gas and used in the manufacture of automobile tires to make them more durable.

     "Then, Borger at last—Borger with its one and only street almost two miles long, lined on both sides with helter skelter buildings and one-story brick shacks—occasionally a two-story brick hotel or rooming house or dance hall; Borger with its one main street literally paved with “black gold”—thick, greasy, grimy oil over dirt roadway cut down two and one half feet from the level of the crude earth banks which serve as curbing; Borger, where every shack is an “ugly”—a hot dog stand here, a chili parlor there; a barber shop, a drugstore, a bank, a hardware store, a grocery store; Borger, where oil wells spring up in one’s front yard to spatter grease on Monday’s laundry in the back yard; Borger, where men are happy and women are more or less miserable; Borger, where oil is king even as was gold at Dawson City in the Klondike.

     "As we drive slowly along this main street, treading slowly behind its unceasing stream of every possible kind of car, and passing the standing row in the center that knows no time limit in parking, let us read a few of the signs. Here on the left is the Mary Jane Hotel—with its sign bearing the picture of a robust infant to make plain the significance of the title. Several blocks farther is—or was before a fire several months ago—Murphy’s dance hall. And of course, there’s “Dad’s restaurant,” Shorty’s barber shop and beauty parlor—ye gods, did we imagine that, a beauty parlor in Borger?

     "At the end of this long street of Borger, we turn at right angles into another similar street and without an interruption are traversing the principal street of Dixon Creek, Borger’s sister city—or perhaps brother town, for the masculine gender seems to prevail. Here we find such signs as the inevitable Dewdrop Inn, “the Stag Billiards and Pool,” Anna and Jack’s Café, Peg’s Café, and the Club Café. Then, almost before we know it, we are in the town of Phillips, with its neater residence section—a long lane with its two rows of neat cottages fronting on the oil-“paved” street, which house the fifteen hundred or more workers of the Phillips Petroleum Company and their families. The men have found good employment here in the three-million dollar casing-head manufacturing plant of the Phillips company. But their women and children—how to be happy, although there’s grease on the lawn, must be their great problem.

     "Having heard that Borger once was a “wild, wild” town, where sometimes men were killed, we turn around and drive back through its main street to find what makes an oil town wild and what is being done about it. We met “Pop” Murphy, of dance hall fame, and asked him—somehow not taking pains to introduce ourselves as writing men. Murphy smiled. It was a broad smile, because Murphy’s face is broad. And so must be his vision of life.

     "Get me right, boys,” said Murphy, “Borger is not a bad town. There are no bad men here—no, nor bad women, either. My girls—“proudly—“are all decent. If they ain’t they don’t work in my dance hall. If a girl dances in my place, she must dance. No sitting’ em out or sneaking away between dances. If she sneaks out—well, she’s out, that’s all. And she don’t come back—not to Murphy’s.

     "Now as for the bad men, let me tell you how that is. One night just after the Rangers came over here to see that everything got along in good order, a young feller goes into one of the soft drink places with some hardware. No more than gets inside the front door till one of the Rangers steps up to meet him.

     "Says the Ranger: ‘Why, sonny, what’s the trouble? What you got them revolvers for? You mustn’t be carrying fire-arms around town. Tut, tut, young man, put ‘em down. Gosh, they might be loaded and go off and hurt somebody.’ And he just carelessly put an arm across that kid’s shoulder, the guns came down and was delivered over to the Ranger, and out he goes with the kid, arm in arm, just like two brothers. That’s the kind of badmen we have. People have tried to make us out a hell-raisin’ town. It’s movie stuff, I’d say.”

     "But why did the Rangers come?” I asked Murphy.

     "Oh, they ain’t been here long and are clearin’ out to-morrow—maybe to-night.” Was there a flicker of hope among the bystanders? “Both of them are swell guys and regular fellers.”

     "Both of them?” slightly surprised. “Are there only two?”

     "Sure—two’s enough. Borger ain’t a bad town.”

     "At one time they sold drinks in Borger, some say across an open bar. There have been no signs of that recently. Home brew could be found in what might have been called “blind tigers.” But still, say it wasn’t anything more than near-beer.

     "Being satisfied that Borger was not so bad (if you can forget several killed when the first rush was on, and only an occasional murder since) as it has been painted, we drove away across the plains into the setting sun, again towards Amarillo. Hours later Amarillo was still too wide-awake for quiet and sleeping. All night long saws and hammers seemed to work—building, ever building.

     "Referring to a map, one will note that Amarillo is almost in the center of the famous Panhandle of Texas. Directly to the east, a little more than two hundred miles is Oklahoma City, North and east, not much farther, are the Oklahoma oil pools, which already have made fabulous riches for the Indians—now an old story. Again, an even hundred miles north of Amarillo, in the Panhandle of Oklahoma where another great oilfield near Boise City, in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, was developed early in 1927. The Texas Panhandle Wells reached their maximum production of 167,000 barrels of oil every twenty-four hours in November, 1926.

     "The Texas Panhandle proper, it will be observed, consists of twenty counties, perfect rectangles on the map, and all practically of the same size—five parallel tiers, with four counties to the tier. Amarillo is the county seat of Potter County on the third tier from the top. Directly east is Carson County, and north of it Hutchinson County. These three counties are in the heart of what many geologists still contend will be the world’s largest oil field, although since its discovery in March of 1926, the Seminole field in central Oklahoma came in and for the week ending January 9, 1927, reached the maximum daily production of 330,000 barrels. But Amarillo believes that it can be content with its own field, as its production figures for January 1927, averaged 152,000 barrels daily. Suspension of new well drillings, due to the falling market, pulled these figures down to 100,000 barrels daily by August of this year. The daily average as this is written, late in October is 90,000 barrels.

     "Moreover, across the Texas Panhandle on a strip 110 miles long and averaging twelve miles wide, lies what is said to be the world’s largest gas field. From the field proper, a minimum of 500 million cubic feet of gas a day has been promised at the lowest estimate, with geologists confidently predicting the average daily gas production will run into billions of cubic feet. As the largest previously known gas field in the world at Monroe, Louisiana, had proved a minimum of 400 million cubic feet a day, since it was opened in 1912, Amarillo and its neighboring Texas counties are not worrying about that source of power.

     "The Texas Panhandle’s oil and gas fields cover a proven area of 325 square miles, with the principal production of oil in Hutchinson County, around Borger. It is in the heart of an immense oval, on a treeless plateau, lying from northwest to southeast on the map. It lies just north of the high table of the Great Staked Plain, a divide the surface of which drains into the Canadian River on the north and to the Pecos River on the south and west.

     "It is between these two rivers and along the flanks and sides of this great uplift that what Amarillo contends is the greatest oil and gas fields are being developed. Almost every week, indeed, some new oil pool is opened in this part of the United States. While this article was being written comes word of an important new field being opened about two hundred and fifty miles south of Amarillo on the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway near McCamey, Texas. Oil derricks there rise on the alkali plains of Crane and Upton counties on lands owned largely by Albert S. Burleson., formerly Postmaster-General. McCamey now claims to be the world’s fastest-growing town. A year ago, even while Amarillo and Borger began suddenly to flourish, McCamey was unknown. Today it is a thriving little city of 7,500 inhabitants, and a 10,000-barrel refinery has been completed.

     "Also in March of 1927, the seventh oil county in the Texas Panhandle took its place on the production map, north of Clarendon in Donley County, about seventy-five miles southeast of Amarillo. This is in a new ”wild-cat” field, lying south of the granite ridge that separates it from the proven area of the eastern extension of the Borger pools in Gray County to the north. One well at a depth of 3,100 feet was making 1,000,000 cubic feet of gas every twenty-four hours and spraying oil over the top of its rig. Geologists say this discovery may mean that a considerably larger area of unknown territory has been added to the main Panhandle field.

     "Yet this is as nothing in the amazing story of Amarillo and Borger. In March 1926, Amarillo was just a healthy town of the “cow country,” and Borger, its present dazzling satellite, didn’t exist at all. But when oil came gushing forth out there in Hutchinson County, from nothing Borger sprang into a city of 25,000 population within one year; and Amarillo jumped in the same time from a town of 28,000 persons to a city of 50,000. To-day Amarillo is the metropolis of an empire the size of Ohio. If one cares for figures its chamber of commerce will cite these: