Stories and Stats from
America's Loneliest Counties
Borden County, Texas
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Number 11 |
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Thomas County, Nebraska |
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Mountains of
West Texas? Borden County,
Texas Borden County is located at the edge of the Llano Estacado. The rolling, broken land of the county drains to the Colorado River and its tributaries and to Lake J. B. Thomas. The Caprock, Gail Mountain, and Muchakooga Peak are notable physical features.
Settlers were not attracted to the area that is now Borden County until the end of the nineteenth century. It was too distant from the United States Army's frontier outposts to be safe from Comanche raiders even after the Civil War. Gail Mountain, also known as Gail Peak, is just west of Gail in central Borden The peak, with a height of about 2,900 feet above mean sea level, rises 342 feet above nearby Gail and is probably named after Gail Borden. The west Texas mountain was possibly at one time called Mount Jake, after Jake Auger, a soldier who served with Ranald S. Mackenzie in 1874. The Great Depression of the 1930s put an
end to the burgeoning growth of the county. By 1940 only about
12,000 acres of county land was planted in cotton and only 233
farms remained in Borden; only 1,356 residents were counted
that year. The discovery of considerable oilfields in 1949 did
not arrest the decline of Borden County population, although
it did provide fortunate ranchers and farmers with another
source of income. Ironically, today there is no gas station in
the county. The nearest place to fill your car in in Post --
32 miles away in Garza County. |
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