By: Lincoln Honaker
In every community, there are 12 assets of commonwealth. These include health, spirituality, water cycle, wildlife and natural world, renewable energy, leisure and recreation, history, foodshed, education, arts and culture, soil and mineral cycle, and sense of place. In this blog, I will be explaining how each of these is included in my hometown of Borger Texas. For health, our town has a hospital called high plains hospital and we also have 2 rural doctors’ offices that support our town for any medical needs. On the spirituality side of things, our town is located in the bible belt so there are many Christian churches along with a catholic church. The water we use in Borger comes from our local lake near fritch while everyone outside of city limits uses well water.
Our wildlife and natural world are very strong in Borger because we are next door to Lake Meredith which is a part of a state park. Our town is not very big on renewable resources, however. This is due to the fact that Borger was built on one of the largest inland refineries in the world for oil. This is actually a very big part of our history because it is why we even have our town. For leisure and recreation, we have very nice parks, a movie theater, and a bowling alley so there is always something to do. Our foodshed is reliant on the large cattle ranches that border our town like the 4 sixes ranch. For education, Borger has its own school district and a junior college called Frank Phillips which helps local kids get educated. Our local culture is based on cowboys and the life around them. We also have an extremely industrial culture. Sadly we do not have a good soil cycle in Borger due to the high winds and poor farming so it may take some time to rebuild. Lastly, our sense of place is extremely good in Borger. I for one love my town to death, it’s my home and will always be a part of me no matter where I end up.
