Day Trip to Borger 🍔 (FULL EPISODE) S14 E10

The Panhandle, our northern and all too often forgotten region. Well what's up there anyway you might say, besides cows and dirt of course. Well not much I guess, unless you like things like delicious food, hidden canyons, and history as big as Texas. All of which this town boasts in spades. Burger! Sort of makes me hungry, like maybe for a hamburger or maybe a cheeseburger. Let's go get one. This episode was made for y'all with the help of our awesome partners. Check the caption for more info. In the middle of the Texas Panhandle lies Borger, about 50 miles northeast of Amarillo. So this is Borger, named after one of the shadiest characters in Texas history, Ace Borger, during the oil boom of the 1920s. And within months this town was overrun with oil men, peddlers, swindlers, basically crooks of every kind, earning it the nickname Booger Town. It got so bad the governor had to send a detachment of Texas Rangers to clean up the streets. Now lucky for us things have settled down since, but there's still a little bit of Wild West in the air. Let's go explore it. These days Borger's population is around 12,000 folks, which isn't small, but it's only a third of what it was during the oil boom. Now I'm eager to dive into the history, but first I'm gonna need that cheeseburger. And there's no better or more iconic place in town for that than Onion's Cafe. Opened 30 years ago here in downtown, it's become an institution and a museum of sorts, both to the nostalgia of the 50s, but also to the town itself. Owner Nita Crabtree was here the first day it opened. Years later she became the owner and unofficial Borger Burger Queen. Also the steward of the Great Onion. Okay, first off, am I reading this right? World's largest green onion? Yeah, we declared it, but you know, so. Yeah, doesn't quite have the Guinness stamp on it yet. Well look, we're gonna make that phone call for you. Okay. Hey, everything is bigger in Texas, but it's only appropriate considering it's the Onion Burger that made Onions famous. These are cooked onions pressed in the meat. They're sliced real thin and cook as the meat cooks. Like a smash burger, people say, but ours are onion burgers. Very original before the smash burger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smash burger is just a trend. Yeah, that's a new thing, yeah. Y'all are the OG of this. They've been smashing burgers long before it was cool. Thin patties, caramelized onions, melted cheese. So good, it should be illegal. And if you don't like to smash it, their chargrilled burger sears over an open flame. Well, I understand, I mean, that line can back up basically the whole way down this aisle. Right, it'll be constant. What do you think it is that brings all the people in? People are raised on it. I mean, I see kids come in now with, you know, babies that were five when they were coming in and they come in with their kids. And when they come home, they want it. I don't get frozen meat. I don't recut fresh fries. Oh yeah, doing it the hard way. Yeah. It's homemade, handmade food, just like your grandma used to make in a place that's already full of your grandma's old stuff. We all walked in here and we're like, oh my gosh, I remember my grandparents had a bunch of antique Coke signs. And so it does, it just feels like a home. Nostalgic, yeah. People bring stuff all the time to you. We got a plethora of stuff upstairs that needs to probably go to a garage sale. You got a blank spot on the wall right there, just fill it in. That reminds me, I've got a blank spot in my belly. But before I eat, Nita's going to put me to work with their other house specialty, pie. So what pies do we have here? These are coconut. All right. Peanut butter, German chocolate, and a pumpkin. Pumpkin pie. So. Let's cut. Wait, what is this? Just marks them. Oh, nice. Just kind of center it. Look at this, that way everybody gets an even piece. You got to stay in the line though. Oh, because there's no straight across. Yeah. That's going to mess me up. Seven, not eight. It's seven pieces per pie? This is harder than I thought it would be. And ta-da. Oh, I left a bunch of crust in the bottom. I'm fixing to take that away from you. Oh yeah, oh, oh, I can't sell that one. We need a fork. So you said this got taught to y'all by an 80 year old grandma. So warm. I know, that sucks. You know, health board makes you put it on ice. It's better hot. Oh yeah. All the pie sits next to the line in a big old bathtub, tempting everyone to spoil their lunch with dessert first. But I'm on a wait, knowing the burger that's coming for me. Here it is. It is the signature onion burger. Of Onion's Cafe. Look at this. So I did get a double patty. It's got cheese. I added some bacon. I added some jalapenos. The juice from the meat and the juice from the onions like becomes one. That's a killer burger. It's a borger burger. Say that three times fast. Ready? Go. Okay, Chad, here's your second piece of pie. This is after meal. Got it. Very good. Thank you, Nita. Appetizer pie's down, but I didn't have my dessert pie yet. So that's a whole different food group, right? Look at it. Peanut butter chocolate meringue. Well, that was good. I'm willing to bet none of us have ever been to Borger. Can I put money on that? You put money on that. Okay, yeah. You can look around at all the different buildings. You can tell this town used to be much bigger. To the left and to the right are these massive refineries. Boomtown, baby. Boomtown. Booming like a sooner? No, we don't do that. Hold up, hold up. We're still in Texas, right? Right, yes. Just barely though. We don't boom like sooners at all down here. Hey, Luke, open his door and kick him out. I just wanted to make sure I didn't have to kick y'all out. Oh, yeah. I'm sure that's what you were thinking. Borger's economy still revolves around the land. Both the cattle grazing on top of it and the oil underneath. Oil and cows are pretty common in Texas, but Borger's history is anything but. To learn more, we're headed to the Hutchinson County Museum. And this is Executive Director Clay Rennick. Borger was a quintessential boomtown. When oil was discovered here, this was pasture, all of it. Ace Borger came here. He had built three other towns. He made a million dollars in 1926. That's 13 and a half mil a day, okay? My goodness. This is some change. This is an overnight town. The number of cars, they parked in the center, parked on both sides of the street, and the mud was often a foot deep. So it was a real problem. Ace Borger decided that rather than just move to the next project, he would stick around and find other business opportunities. Ace brought a guy from Oklahoma who was a police officer up there. He'd gotten into an altercation with someone, shot him, and killed him. He came to Texas, and they made him the sheriff. He got fired over there because he was a dirty cop, then he gets hired immediately. Two-gun Dick Herwig. He carried two pearl-handled revolvers on his hip. He was in charge of the prostitution and all of the liquor in Borger. So every canyon around here had a steal in it. Ace was getting a piece of it. Two-gun was getting a piece of it. Johnny Miller, Ace's partner, the elected mayor, was getting a piece of it. Just a few guys. Just a few guys were reaping all the rewards. All the way down. Wow. Move over, Chicago. This was the panhandle mafia. Everything ran smoothly until the district attorney was assassinated on the streets, and the governor had to call in the Texas Rangers to clean up the town. Had to enforce martial law. Yes, twice. It's the only town in Texas that's had martial law twice. You folks in Borger are just a little too independent sometimes. Just a little bit. That's been said. Years later, Ace met his end in a shootout at the post office. I tell you, this is a Borger blockbuster waiting to happen. I mean, they've already got all the props, including the oil equipment. This is a do-it-yourself drilling rig. So if you were a professional company, you got one of those across the street. But if you'd watched a little bit too much oil GTV and thought, I'll just go do it myself, this is what you got. If one of those took six weeks to drill a well, this probably took six years. I mean, can you imagine? While the boom stories are incredible, they shouldn't outshine the older and equally amazing history of Hutchinson County. Tales of Coronado's conquest in the 1500s, tales of the buffalo that roamed the land, and the Great Plains Indians who called it home. The reason the Indians were here was because of buffalo. The buffalo migrated all the way from Mexico to Canada. They knew when they needed to be here to take buffalo. It fit all their needs. So they completely relied on them for their entire livelihood. United States Army knew that if they killed the buffalo herds, exterminated them, that the Indians wouldn't be a problem anymore. Any estimate of how many buffalo there were? You know, it's hard to estimate, but 60 million is the number that people seem to settle on. And they killed them all, but a few thousand in two to three years. It's hard to summarize the horrors of the Plains. It was a war, and war is never clean. As the buffalo hunters descended on the area, the tribes fought hard to keep control and stop the slaughter of the herd. And this conflict led to the two famous battles of Adobe Walls. The first happened in 1864, when Wild West legend Kit Carson held off a force of about 1,400 natives. Then 10 years later, another battle at a buffalo hunting outpost. 1874, the buffalo hunters came south of the Arkansas River and were hunting in land where they weren't supposed to be. The Indians were a little ticked. Aquana Parker put together the Kiowa, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho, and they were not friendly with each other. But this was an assault on all of them. These days, there isn't anything left of the battle site, but I still think it's time for a short road trip. Chet, where the heck are we? We're going to where the history actually happened, Daniel. But history is everywhere. Well, true, but this is some special history. You can learn about some things in a museum, but sometimes you got to get your boots a little dirty. In the middle of a field. We got to get in the dirt. That's where Texas history happened, dirt. After an hour drive to the eastern edge of Hutchinson County, we are here. So you have to use your imagination, but rewind the clock 150 years, and we would be standing inside a Buffalo Hunters trading post. And surrounding us in every direction is the historic hunting grounds of the Plains Indians. It wasn't much more than mud and sticks, but it was permanent and on forbidden land. So it's June of 1874, and suddenly 700 warriors led by Chief Aquana Parker thundered in from these hills surrounding this trading post and trapping all the men inside. Day two of the battle, a group of Cheyenne warriors appeared on horseback over on that mesa, thinking they were way out of range. And truthfully, they were. But it's this moment that sets up one of the most famous gunshots in Wild West history. To this day, it's known as the impossible shot. Almost a mile away, using an open sight rifle, Billy Dixon fired and knocked the man sitting next to Chief Aquana Parker off his horse. It spooked them so much, they stopped the attack. But the war itself was far from over. So it was this battle that started the Red River War, which spread all across the Texas Panhandle and ultimately ended with the Plains Indians surrendering to the reservations in Oklahoma. War is a messy thing. Fueled by racism and hate on both sides, we can't change it. We can only look back, learn from it, and hope to never repeat it. We now interrupt this programming to remind you to like and subscribe. Now back to the road. I don't know if that shot is just myth, legend, or if it really happened. You think it was mostly luck, mostly skill, or mostly fiction? Mostly fiction. Really? Let's take a vote, guys. What do y'all think? Did it happen? No, I'm going for fiction. I think it's real. I think it happened. Of course you think it happened. People from the Wild West never lied about anything. And based on how well I know you, you belong in the Wild West. 100%. I can't disagree. Since I'm still feeling a bit historical, well, let's rewind the clock even further back to a time before written history by visiting one of America's most unique and treasured sites, the Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument. This is a national monument, which means it's some of the most protected land in our country. Why? It's sacred. Okay. It's very special, especially to the Native Americans. Even today, they feel a connection to them. This is Park Ranger Elaine Bodie. Her job is to tell the story of how for thousands of years our Native ancestors traveled to this site to painstakingly quarry some of the best, most exquisite flint on earth. I understand we've been able to trace. Flint from this part of Texas went... A thousand miles in all directions. Wow! It was traded like currency and used to make a number of tools. Arrowheads, spear points, any kind of tool you might have in your toolbox, they were making. This is a diorama of the quarry pits. And had we seen them in their day, we would have seen that they were at least three to five feet deep. Okay. And this is only on the top of all these mesas? It is on the tops of the mesas. It formed in the cap rock. This is a sampling of what we call lithic scatter. The pieces that they were breaking apart to make these. And this is called a biface or core. Whoa! And they would trade. This would become a trade blank that they would trade with other peoples who were coming through the area. It's beautiful. Isn't it gorgeous? A person that is very knowledgeable about how to read the rock. It could probably take them about 30 minutes to make a spear point. 30 minutes? It would take us 30 days. Yeah, that's what I thought you were going to say. So these guys... They knew exactly what they were doing. Wow, that's pretty cool. It's great to learn about the quarries in the visitor center, but even better to see the quarries themselves. Again, sometimes you just got to get in the dirt. We headed up yonder? We're headed way up there at the top. Okay. Well, lead the way. This doesn't seem too bad. The quarries are only accessible via a guided tour and a three-quarter mile hike, but I know it's going to be well worth the journey. Okay, Chet, we're almost there. I can see the top from here. Okay, good. Come on, buddy. Wasn't expecting a hike today. I thought we were just going to go to visitor center and look out the window. The best hikes are unexpected hikes, I say. That's very true. Even if this mesa wasn't covered in the world's best flint, well, I'd still come up here for the views alone. Here we are at one of our over 700 pits that are on this monument. 700 across the top of this mesa? This is all the scatter leftovers? Lithic means tools made from stone, and the scatter part is a part that they took off the stone to make the tools that they were wanting. So every one of these rocks was touched at one point by a native up here? By the hand of a human. Oh, it's hard to get your head around. But based on the points we've found, we know the Folsom and Clovis people found this place and this flint to be very special. Man, you just look over the whole ground and you think at any moment you're going to see an arrowhead or you just see these beautiful pieces of alabate flint. Something in me just wants to bring one of these home and put it on my souvenir shelf. But keep in mind, it is a federal crime to take anything from a national monument. We got to leave things as they lie here and to respect the legacy of this place and all the people who came before us. You lock away mental pictures and you leave with only memories. It's very rare to find a national park. Even more rare when you find two right next door to each other. And if alabates protects our cultural heritage, well this next park protects our recreational heritage. This is the Lake Meredith National Recreational Area. The oasis of the high plains, protecting more than 44,000 acres of earth, water and sky. And this is Park Superintendent Eric Smith. I love it. Like, you know, you've got alabates, which is truly a sacred place, a shrine almost. And then you got Lake Meredith, which is like, let's all go out and have a good time. Yeah, and we have such a wide range of recreational opportunities. You have all of the water-based and then we have land-based, mountain biking and hiking, just premier trails. And then we actually have two areas that are for off-road vehicle use. Lake Meredith is a unicorn of a park that allows hunting and fishing, but it's also a bit magical for its natural beauty. I can't think of another lake anywhere in Texas that has the same look. It's almost as if they flooded Palo Duro. It really is. This is a hidden gem. When you come in here, you're basically inside the park before you see the canyons and the lake. Well, I did bring my bike, Eric. So which way to the mountain bike trails? Hopefully it's not like off of this cliff down in. Well, it's close to it. We'll get there. We're going to walk. All right. All right, so the Comanches rode horses all throughout this area, but I brought my own style of pony. Let's go. I'll see you all on the other side. I might do 20 miles. I might do 40 miles. I might do 240 miles. Wow, we are riding around the lake through all these canyons, clinging to the edge of this cliff and right below us, certain death. Some of these trails are about a bike tire wide. You're up against the wall of the canyon and the fall off on the right is intense. Also, probably should have worn pants. You know, they say in the desert, everything wants to poke, prick or sting you. But I think this Texas Plains might be even meaner. Everything is trying to attach itself, get a free ride. There are no layups because when you tell your crew you're going to meet them in a certain spot, you have to meet them in a certain spot. You can't just turn around and go back. Hey, a little bit further ride. The sunset is getting beautiful and I swear there are rattlesnakes behind every rock. I hear them. They're rattling at me. This is amazing. You know what this is? It's a tumbleweed. Somebody in Round Top is willing to pay $100 for it and I only want to throw it off a cliff. That's what's shredding up my legs. So there are different trail levels. I picked the hardest one and now I'm learning that I might not be in prime mountain biking shape, but I am still having fun. Wow, look at this quiet cove. That's awesome. I always have to remind myself, don't just look down at the trail, look out and around because you definitely don't want to miss any of this. I've mountain biked all over Texas and this is certainly some of the most scenic. But after a quick change, my crew is once again questioning why we're staring at endless flat earth. Aren't we heading to another field? The things out here are spread out. Chet, where are we going to eat dinner? If you love driving through the middle of fields, Daniel, you're going to love where we're going for dinner. But it also has steak. Okay, I'm there. Let's do it. I'm hungry. So there's the middle of nowhere and then past that, well, you'll find the sign to the Double XL Steakhouse. From there, it's just two miles more down a dirt road. But eventually you'll arrive at a quaint ranch house serving up the most in-demand and delicious steak in the Texas panhandle. It's here where owner Charles Stevens cooks up his signature cowboy ribeyes on a 50-year-old oak-fired grill. What you got going on back here? I'm cooking your steaks, buddy. That's what I do, man. I cook steaks. Right? I mean, you're a little bit of everything, I understand. I cook steaks. I help people get sober. Tonight, we're cooking steak. Charles is larger than life and has a powerful testimony of how the Lord pulled him out of some very dark places. This restaurant is now his fiery pulpit of sorts, bringing steaky hope to us all. You get a ribeye if you don't ask. If you ask, you can get pork. All right. And if you ask twice, you can get salmon. Wow. And then what comes on the plate with it? Everything. You get drink, salad, dessert, coffee, the worst. It's a one-price order to get. Yes. Oh, man. Simple does it. And Simple works so well, this small dining room books up months in advance. Yet, it's still only open on Friday and Saturday night. Here's my signature appetizer. Okay. It's salmon with shrimp, and I added a little pork to it with my jalapeno apricot jelly on it. They're going to serve that in heaven. I know it. That's manna. Manna from heaven. That's right. Oh, that is good. Well, if I eat all this, I'm not going to have any room for steak. Is that a bad thing? I got to go, boxes. Charles is a man of hospitality and healing, who refused to let me eat alone. And so he's invited his staff and friends to join us. There's not another place like this. I've seen a lot of Texas. I've never been to a place like this. Real quiet. It's like a hole in the wall. People don't eat and leave. They sit and chat and visit. They're here. Yeah. It only takes one, and they're hooked. Is there a scale anywhere in your kitchen to tell me how big this ribeye is? He really doesn't know what the food weighs. He just charges you by the weight you gain while you're here. That's right. This is hobby, because this is way out of hand for me. I'm a country boy. I'm writing with pencil in a spiral notebook, okay? So y'all ease up on this country boy. I get the feeling that they connected to you, not just on a food level, but something deeper. Yeah, something deeper. That's cool. A spiritual level. Absolutely. Y'all built something special. And I mean that. Borger epitomizes what I love about Texas. That you can find some of the most interesting destinations, hiding in some of the most unexpected towns. Places that are as legendary as a mile-long shot, as thrilling as a canyon ride, and as satisfying as an oozing cheeseburger. Man, I figured it'd be rude for me to pass on the desserts, right? I mean, it's included. It's part of the experience. So I will see all y'all out on the road. Vaya con Dios, amigos. Turtle pie. Tastes like real turtles. Howdy, y'all. Follow along with my adventures at Chet Tripper on Instagram and at TheDayTripperTV on Facebook and YouTube. Or head to thedaytripper.com for travel guides, past episodes, and info on our mobile app and Team Day Tripper. This episode was made for y'all with the help of our awesome partners. Check the caption for more info. Howdy, y'all. Chet the Day Tripper here. Thanks so much for tripping with us. Remember, while you're here, like this video, subscribe to our channel so that we can stay out there on the road and keep on tripping. Did we miss anything in this town? Leave us a comment. Let us know. We love finding out about new stops with all your tips. And if you love epic Texas day trips, remember to check our channel. We got a lot of them on there. Also, don't forget, if you want some sweet Day Tripper merch or another cool Texas-made product, come see us in Georgetown at the Day Tripper World Headquarters. You can also shop online if you check the link down there in the caption. All right, y'all. Vaya con Dios, amigos.