First National Bank Building
Eldorado, Schleicher County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Local investors raised $30,000 in 1906 to form the First National Bank of Eldorado, Texas. Contractors Drew and Harvey used native limestone to construct this bank building in 1907. Its Renaissance Revival style features segmented arches and exaggerated details capped by a 3-part parapet with spherical finials. The bank merged with the Eldorado State Bank in 1913 and remained here until 1942. This site subsequently became a popular pool and domino hall. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1993
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When local investors raised $30,000 to charter the First National Bank of Eldorado in 1906, they hired contractors Drew and Harvey to build a home for it from native limestone the following year. The Renaissance Revival design, with segmented arches and a three-part parapet crowned by spherical finials, announced permanence and prosperity to a young ranching town. The bank merged in 1913 and left in 1942, after which the building found new life as a pool and domino hall.
Why it matters
Sturdy small-town bank buildings symbolized the arrival of commerce and stability on the West Texas frontier, and their reuse shows how communities keep landmark buildings at the center of local life.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
West Texas Woolen Mills
Eldorado, TX
Sheep flooded the West Texas range after 1883, and by the 1930s wool was big business around Eldorado. Banker Joseph B. Christian and his textile-engineer son built this native-stone mill to spin that wool, opening in 1941 with Governor W. Lee O'Daniel on hand. The next year the plant won a major wartime contract to weave Army blankets, then converted successfully to peacetime work and anchored the local economy until its sale in 1963.
Christopher Columbus Doty
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Christopher Columbus Doty (1857–1944) came to Texas from Missouri in 1879 and soon claimed the headquarters at Ten-Mile Water Hole, becoming the first permanent citizen of what would become Schleicher County. In 1882 he drilled the county's first water well and raised the first windmill south of the Concho River — the kind of innovation that unlocked ranching and farming across the arid West Texas plains. When the county organized in 1901, his land was included and he was elected its first tax assessor-collector.
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The site of the Sutton County Courthouse began as something more elemental than government: the first water well in the area, where sheepmen brought their flocks to drink and decided to settle. That same scarce water bred violence — a deadly quarrel over watering rights left one West Texas family patriarch dead on the very ground where the courthouse would rise. The story compresses the ranching frontier's hard bargains into a single contested spot.
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