Black Gold and Red Lights

Some towns are born casual and calm-like. Borger had a streetwalker for a midwife and an oil boom for a birth announcement. Oil, blood, and money flowed freely when this Texas Panhandle town burst upon the scene in the 1920s like a stampede of rawhide Texas Longhorns hell-bent for water. Author Jerry Sinise, noted Amarillo author and travel writer, interviewed "e;survivors"e; of the High Plains boomtown and dug through musty police records and old newspaper files to write this Texas saga. Borger - better known to 1920 and '30 contemporaries as "e;Booger Town"e; - sowed its wild oats and reaped a wild harvest of death and destruction before Texas Rangers joined local officers to expel the criminal element and bring law and order. Today Borger is a progressive agricultural and industrial city with no hint of its riotous beginnings. Few want to talk about the past of "e;Black Gold and Red Lights."e;