'Boomtown', Thomas Hart Benton,
 Borger, Texas

Boomtown is Benton’s first Regionalist (or American Scene) masterpiece and the result of a 1926 summer sketching trip which took him to Borger, Texas. Early in 1926, oil was discovered in the Panhandle of Texas; real estate promoter “Ace” Borger purchased land and created the town whose population soared from zero to 30,000 within days!

Borger Birthday Parade, Borger TX, 1930
Photo from: http://www.usgwarchives.net/tx/hutchinson/history/baird/parade3.jpg

Benton wrote of Borger: Out on the open plain beyond the town a great thick column of black smoke rose as in a volcanic eruption from the earth to the middle of the sky. There was a carbon mill out there that burnt thousands of cubic feet of gas every minute, a great, wasteful, extravagant burning of resources for momentary profit. All the mighty anarchic carelessness of our country was revealed in Borger. But it was revealed with a breadth, with an expansive grandeur, that was as effective emotionally as are the tremendous spatial reaches of the plains country where the town was set. One did not get the feeling, in spite of the rough shacks and dirty tents in which the people lived, of that narrow cruelty and bitter misery that hovers around eastern industrial centers. There was a belief, written in men’s faces, that all would find a share in the gifts of this mushroom town…..Borger on the boom was a big party….where capital…joined hands with everybody in a great democratic dance.
Arthur Strawn, “An American Epic”
Outlook & Independent
March 26, 1930
http://mag.rochester.edu/plugins/acrobat/teachers/pastInservices/Boomtown_Pappas.pdf

Carbon Black Plant 2008

Phillips House, Borger TX 2008

Phillips House, Borger TX 2008

Phillips House, Borger TX 2008

Hutchinson County Historical Museum, Borger TX 2008

Nu-Way Cafe, Borger TX 2007
Photo courtesy of Martha K. Smith
 

Morley Theater, Borger TX 2008

Mesquite & Prickly Pear Cactus, Borger TX 2008

Post Drive-In, Borger TX 1962
Photo courtesy of Les Hargis