The History Begins

It all begins in 1884, When Ben Semonis moves from Illinois, to marry Elizabeth in Langtry, Texas, at the Jersey Lilly Saloon court room and pool hall. There was so much disregard on where the border was between the US and Mexico that Ben set up his homestead on the Maher-Fitzsimmons sandbar, ten years before the namesakes creation. He no longer had to pay taxes, and gained a large sum of money for the family to gain acreage for raising cattle.
Investments grew, and then technology, and Ben's son Carvel bought the first tower called an oil rig, and began drawing crude from the sand bar, earning the family thousands of dollars. Carvel kept dredging sand towards the sandbar to create more "land" for the family, and soon reached 20 acres of sandbar in the river. People were catching on, and forced him stop the process, due to the damming of the river with the original property and the 12 acres of oil rigs and cattle. By 1930, Jonas Simonis, Dan's father, was born into one of the great fortunes of West Texas legend. The story continues....