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Eighty-one-year-old billionaire John Poindexter has no plans to leave his vast fortune to relatives — he simply has no heirs. Instead, the businessman has decided to dispose of his wealth in a highly unusual way: he wants to leave it to the small, nearly abandoned town of Shafter, Texas.

“I’ve never been married, I don’t have any children,” Poindexter told The New York Times.

The Houston native has set his sights on Shafter, a former mining settlement that is now home to around 25 people.

If the billionaire’s plan comes to fruition, Shafter could eventually be transformed into a unique historic resort. The plans call for a tourist complex and an open-air museum, with historic buildings including an old saloon, post office and general store restored as part of the project.

The property recently acquired by Poindexter adds to his already impressive real estate portfolio. Among his holdings is Cibolo Creek Ranch, located roughly 10 miles from Shafter.

“We’re moving one step at a time,” ranch manager Tom Davis told The Big Bend Sentinel. “The first idea is to restore [the properties] and then determine what uses they are best suited for.”

Shafter was once far from a quiet settlement. At the height of the silver mine’s prosperity in the early 20th century, as many as 1,500 people lived there. But the mine finally closed in 1942, and the town gradually emptied out.

Now, local residents are watching as the forgotten town could get a new lease on life thanks to the billionaire.

“It’s definitely a wake-up call that makes people think about what’s going to happen to the town,” Shafter resident David Long told the Sentinel. He said that if the settlement gets a reliable water system, “the place will start to thrive.”

Not everyone, however, is enthusiastic about the changes ahead.

“We lived in one of the most beautiful places in the Big Bend, just 300 yards from a good highway, and yet all of this was ours alone. We knew it wasn’t going to stay that way forever,” another resident, Randall Cater, told the Sentinel.

Now Shafter has an unexpected chance to transform itself from an almost forgotten mining town into a tourist destination — thanks to a billionaire who has decided to leave his fortune not to children or grandchildren, but to an entire town.

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