John Poindexter, an 81-year-old billionaire, has no heirs to leave his massive fortune — so he’s leaving it to a ghost town in Texas.
“I’ve never been married, I have no children,” Poindexter told the New York Times in an article published on September 19.
The Houston native has zeroed in on Shafter, Texas, a town of about 25 residents about 40 miles south of Marfa. The former mining town, if all goes to Poindexter’s plan, will eventually be home to a resort, a living history museum with a rebuilt saloon, a post office and a general store.
His recently purchased properties are added to his already loaded real estate portfolio, which includes Cibolo Creek Ranch, which is about 10 miles away.
“We’re taking it step by step,” Tom Davis, the manager of Cibolo Creek Ranch, told The Big Bend Sentinel. “The idea is to first restore [properties] then look at what use they may be the best.”
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The former silver mining town previously was home to as many as 1,500 during the peak of the mine’s operations in the early 1900s. The mine was permanently closed in 1942.
“This is a wake-up call for sure, for people to start considering what’s going to happen to the town,” Shafter resident David Long told the Sentinel. “Once we get a dependable, good water system in here, the place is going to boom.”
Other residents are not so thrilled about the coming changes, as Randall Cater told the Sentinel, “Here we were in one of the most beautiful places in the Big Bend, not 300 yards off a good highway, and we had it all to ourselves. We knew it was too good to last.”
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