Texas billionaire John Poindexter, 81, plans to revive Shafter, a former silver mining ghost town in West Texas, transforming it into a living history museum and resort. Once home to hundreds of miners and the Presidio Mine — which produced over 90 percent of Texas silver — Shafter dwindled after the mine closed in 1942. Today, about two dozen people remain among crumbling adobe walls, 20 miles north of the Rio Grande.

Poindexter, owner of the luxury Cibolo Creek Ranch, owns about a fifth of the town center and intends to restore a saloon, post office, general store, and a dozen adobe residences for rental through his Tidewater and Big Bend Foundation. The nonprofit, which he funds, will eventually inherit all his properties, including the 30,000-acre ranch where Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016. Poindexter, a Republican voter who opposes federal border construction in Big Bend National Park and an Australian company’s plan to restart the Shafter mine, views the project as educational: "We've forgotten this enormous debt we have to prior generations." Meanwhile, Black Bear Minerals prepares to reopen the mine, and federal contractors have paused border barrier work in Big Bend until at least Sept. 30.