A. P. (Ace) Borger

Who was A. P. (Ace) Borger?

Asa Phillip (Ace) Borger, 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.²