Borger was platted in 1926 on a townsite near the Canadian River, where Hutchinson County's plains start breaking into slopes and draws. On that kind of ground, rain doesn't sit -- it runs.
Tell us what the water is doing and we’ll call you back to set up a free on-site look.
Borger was platted in 1926 on a townsite near the Canadian River, where Hutchinson County's plains start breaking into slopes and draws. On that kind of ground, rain doesn't sit -- it runs.
In March 1926, after oil was found nearby, Ace Borger and attorney John R. Miller bought a 240-acre townsite near the Canadian River in the southern part of Hutchinson County. The Handbook of Texas says more than 45,000 people arrived within ninety days. Nobody in that rush was thinking about where the stormwater would go.
The Handbook describes the county as 871 square miles of plains and broken terrain. The Canadian angles across it from southwest to northeast, and the land along the river and its side creeks is cut into valleys, while the northern part of the county is high rolling plain. Borger is on the river side of that picture, at the junction of State highways 136, 152 and 207.
The first Borger went up fast and cheap. By the late 1930s, with help from the Work Projects Administration, streets were improved and the boom shacks gave way to permanent buildings. Oil, carbon black and petrochemical plants kept the town growing after that, and the 1960 count came to nearly 21,000 residents.
That history is written into your yard. A house from the 1930s or 1950s was graded to whatever its builder thought was good enough that year, and every driveway, slab, shed and fence line added since has changed how water crosses the lot. On a street with any slope to it, one new patio uphill can push water into the yard below.
The full range of fixes, chosen for what your lot is actually doing — start with why yards here hold water:
On flat ground a storm leaves a puddle. On a slope, runoff picks up speed and soil and arrives at the low end of the lot all at once -- usually against a foundation wall, a garage door, or a back fence that acts like a small dam. Hutchinson County averages about 19.9 inches of rain a year, but it rarely comes gently: a storm climatology from NWS Amarillo found June is the peak month for both severe hail and severe thunderstorm winds across the Panhandles.
Ground near the breaks can also be hard digging. NRCS describes breaks soils such as the Potter series as gravelly material loaded with strongly cemented calcium carbonate nodules and calcrete fragments. If your lot sits on something like that, a trench for a drain line takes a different plan than one cut through soft plains clay.
On sloped property the goal is usually to catch water before it reaches the house: a French drain run across the slope above the foundation, a shallow swale that steers sheet flow around the structure, or regrading where fill has been piled the wrong way. We walk the lot from its high corner down, following the path the water takes, and mark where it gets in and where it can get out.
If runoff has already started working under a slab or a sidewalk, foundation drainage comes first. If an older line has silted shut or been crushed by a vehicle, drainage repair may be the whole job.
Amarillo Drainage Pros covers the wider Texas Panhandle, not just Amarillo, and nobody here is going to pretend to live down the street from you. Hutchinson County is part of our area, along with neighbors like Stinnett and Fritch.
Call (806) 606-0904 and tell us what the water does when it storms. We'll ring you back to book a free on-site assessment of your Borger property, with no obligation attached.
Free on-site drainage assessments in Borger and across the Panhandle. Call or send the form and we’ll set up a time to look.