Bernardus Eggink was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands. He was the son of Garret Jan Eggink and Mina Arends. Around 1900, Ben, as he was called came to the US on his way to the Alaska Gold Fields. He didn't strike gold in Alaska but a few years later in Los Angeles California he met the lovely Augusta Alberta Sperber and quickly married her.
Ben and Augusta had three children, Bernard Francis Eggink,
Loree Eggink, and
Garret John Eggink. They lived a hard life as Ben oversaw
the building of Oil Field pipelines in California and Texas while Augusta
ran boarding houses for the oil field roughnecks. Ben founded several short
lived boom towns but only one lasted,
Denver City, in the high plains of West Texas, between Lubbock, Texas,
and Hobbs, New Mexico. Ben named the town after his friend Hugh Rapp's
"Denver Drilling Company."
Ben Eggink was a Scottish Rite Mason and member
of the Mascat Lodge
of Wichita Falls.
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