A.P. (Ace) Borger

Asa Phillip (Ace) Borger (April 12, 1888 – August 31, 1934), the founder of Borger, Texas, was born to Phillip Borger and the former Minnie Ann West on a family farm near Carthage, Missouri. His father, a veterinarian, died when Borger was just six years old. He and his siblings were reared by their mother and grandmothers. Borger attended school in Carthage and graduated from business college. Sometime around 1907 he married classmate Elizabeth Willoughby. They spent their first years in a rented farmhouse near Carthage where Borger opened a lumber yard. The couple had three children.

Borger began his career as a town promoter at the time of World War I. In 1915 Borger and his younger brother Lester Andrew, known as Pete Borger, sold land in Picher, Oklahoma, which was in the center of valuable lead and zinc deposits. In 1917 the Borgers, partnered with noted oilman Tom Slick, set up the oil town of Slick near Bristow, Oklahoma. At each town the Borgers and their associates opened hotels, gasoline stations, lumberyards, sold land, and pushed for the building of railroad lines to their towns. In 1922 they successfully started Cromwell, Oklahoma, as a boomtown. Though Borger and his family maintained a home for a short time in each of his new towns, he continued to use Carthage as his main base of operations.

Borger soon became interested in the discovery of oil in the Texas Panhandle. Early in 1926 he purchased 240 acres (0.97 km²) in southern Hutchinson County from rancher John Frank Weatherly at a price of fifty dollars an acre. He then obtained a grant from Secretary of State of Texas Emma Grigsby Meharg to organize the Borger Townsite Company, with capital of $10,000 divided into 100 shares of $100. In addition to Mr. Borger the company's stockholders included C. C. Horton of the Gulf Oil Company and John R. Miller, an old friend of Borger's from the Oklahoma boom days, who became the new town's first mayor. The Borger Townsite Company laid out the town and opened the sale of lots on March 8, 1926. By the end of the day, the company had grossed between $60,000 and $100,000. Six months later Borger had sold out completely, for the price of more than a million dollars.

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