Midland National Bank
Midland, Midland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized on August 22, 1902, in Odessa as Odessa National Bank, this institution began with an initial capital of $25, 000. Less than one year later the bank's shareholders voted to relocate to Midland and the institution became Midland National Bank. The bank set up offices in the Llano hotel building at the corner of Wall and Main Street. Early leadership for the institution was provided by such prominent people as D.W. Brunson, Andrew Fasken, and Ralph Barron. With its business largely dependent upon the cattle industry, the bank served its customers until a prolonged drought caused an economic crisis which led to its reorganization in 1923. By 1927 the oil industry had become the major business of the bank. Throughout the subsequent "boom and bust" years of the oil business, the bank has continued operations. A new three-story bank building was erected in 1953 on the corner of Texas and Big Spring, and a nine-story tower was added four years after. In a continued period of growth, the bank merged with the Bank of the Southwest in 1968. A new fourteen-story building was completed at this site in 1976. In 1983 the bank's name was changed to First City National Bank of Midland.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chartered in Odessa in 1902 as the Odessa National Bank with just $25,000 in capital, this institution moved to Midland within a year and reinvented itself alongside the West Texas economy. It rode the cattle trade until a devastating drought forced a 1923 reorganization, then hitched itself to the oil boom that reshaped the Permian Basin from 1927 onward. Through decades of "boom and bust," mergers, and ever-taller downtown towers, the bank remained a fixture of Midland's commercial life.
Why it matters
The bank's shifting fortunes—from cattle to oil—mirror the story of West Texas itself, where fragile frontier economies were transformed by the discovery of petroleum.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
West Texas in the early 1900s ran on cattle. The grasslands of the Permian Basin supported vast ranching operations, and a town's fortunes rose and fell with the herds. A bank in such a place was really a bank on beef, and its ledgers moved with the seasons, the rains, and the price of livestock.
Banking on the frontier was a young and often fragile business. Institutions were small, capital was thin, and a single hard year could threaten a bank's survival. Communities like Midland and nearby Odessa were still finding their footing, and their financial lives were tied to a single, weather-dependent industry.
Into that world, in 1902, a new bank was organized, one whose long life would end up mirroring the transformation of the entire region.
People & events
The institution began on August 22, 1902, chartered in Odessa as the Odessa National Bank with an initial capital of twenty-five thousand dollars. In less than a year its shareholders voted to move to Midland, where it was reborn as Midland National Bank and set up shop in the Llano hotel building at the corner of Wall and Main.
Early leadership came from prominent local figures including D.W. Brunson, Andrew Fasken, and Ralph Barron, the kind of civic businessmen who built young Texas towns. For its first two decades the bank's business leaned heavily on the cattle trade, which made it strong in good years and vulnerable in bad ones.
That vulnerability arrived as a prolonged drought, which triggered an economic crisis and forced the bank's reorganization in 1923. Yet within a few years the ground quite literally shifted. By 1927 the oil industry had become the bank's major business. Through the boom-and-bust decades that followed, the bank kept its doors open, put up a three-story building in 1953, added a nine-story tower, merged with the Bank of the Southwest in 1968, completed a fourteen-story building at this site in 1976, and in 1983 became First City National Bank of Midland.
Its place in the American story
The story of this one bank is the story of West Texas in miniature. It was born into a cattle economy so tied to rainfall that a single drought could nearly break it, and it survived by hitching its future to petroleum when oil transformed the Permian Basin in the 1920s. That pivot, from hooves to derricks, reshaped countless American communities across the Southwest.
The rising skyline the bank built over the decades tells its own tale. Each taller building marked another surge of the boom-and-bust cycle that defines oil country, where fortunes are made and unmade on the price of crude. A downtown of growing towers is what an oil economy looks like when it is on the way up.
And the bank's steady survival through those swings speaks to something larger: the way local financial institutions anchored frontier towns, absorbing shocks and lending against the future so that a settlement could become a city.
If you visit
Downtown Midland today carries the fingerprints of the oil age in its skyline, and this bank's history is woven right into it. As you look at the taller downtown buildings, remember that each height once represented a wave of prosperity rolling in off the oilfields.
Think about the humble start the marker records, a small bank in a hotel building at a street corner, and how far the institution traveled from that modest room. The distance between those first cramped offices and the multi-story towers is the distance the whole region traveled in the twentieth century.
This is a good stop for anyone curious about how money and geology shaped the American West. Stand in the business district, picture the cattle years giving way to the oil years, and you are looking at the engine that built modern Midland.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · D.W. Brunson
- · Andrew Fasken
- · Ralph Barron
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Yucca Theatre
Midland, TX
Riding Midland's oil-fueled growth, T. S. Hogan announced this multipurpose theatre in 1927 and hired architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, who gave it an elaborate Gothic Revival facade over an Egyptian Revival interior. The Yucca opened on December 5, 1929, with a screening of "Rio Rita" and a New York musical revue. Through the Depression it stayed busy with vaudeville, opera, recitals, and graduations, and it still recalls Midland's rise as a petroleum capital.
The Petroleum Building
Midland, TX
Convinced Midland sat at the heart of the Permian Basin, oilman and rancher T. S. Hogan announced this office building in 1927 as a hub for the region's oil companies, dedicating it on July 4, 1929. Designed by Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, it opened just before the stock-market crash sent oil to fifteen cents a barrel and drove companies away. When Midland finally became a leading oil center in the years that followed, the Petroleum Building played the role Hogan had imagined.
Midland County
Midland, TX
Midland sits where old cattle trails once crossed and where, tradition holds, the last Comanche raid into Texas passed. The Texas and Pacific Railroad reached the spot in 1881, and its position halfway between El Paso and Fort Worth gave the town its name. Sheep and Hereford cattle came first, then farmers drawn by windmill-pumped water—until the 1928 Permian Basin oil discovery made Midland the headquarters of a booming petroleum empire.
Staked Plains
Midland, TX
The Staked Plains was the first newspaper published in Midland County, printed in 1885 from a frame building on this site. Each copy was hand-set and hand-printed on an old-style press at a rate of about five per hour, and the paper carried county court proceedings at three-quarters of a cent per square inch. J.C. Rathbun served as its editor and publisher.