Site of First Bank in La Feria
La Feria, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Cameron County Bank of La Feria, this community's first bank, occupied this structure soon after it was founded in 1912. The building was erected by W.A. Strickland, a well-known contractor here. Organized as a private institution, the bank received a state charter in 1913. Its founder was Illinois-born Bailey H. Dunlap (1886-1957), who served as first mayor of La Feria in 1915. The bank was rechartered as the First National Bank of La Feria in 1925. After it moved to new quarters in 1927, this building was occupied by other businesses. (1975)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
La Feria's first bank opened in this building soon after its 1912 founding, just as the Rio Grande Valley's railroad-fed farm boom was drawing settlers and capital south. Founded by Illinois-born Bailey H. Dunlap — who became the town's first mayor in 1915 — it won a state charter, was rechartered as a national bank in 1925, and moved to new quarters by 1927.
Why it matters
Small-town banks were the financial engines that turned raw Valley farmland into towns during Texas's early-twentieth-century agricultural expansion.
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Related people
- · Bailey H. Dunlap
- · W. A. Strickland
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dunlap House
La Feria, TX
Valley developer W. E. Stewart began this adobe-brick and stucco house in 1912 but sold it before completion to his employee Bailey H. Dunlap, an Illinois native. Dunlap founded La Feria's first bank, dealt in real estate across the Rio Grande Valley, and served as the town's first mayor in 1915, and the home was enlarged over the following decades.
Rosalio Longoria House
La Feria, TX
La Feria's oldest residence was built in 1909 by local carpenter Felipe Perez for Rosalio Ponce Longoria, a contractor who cleared land so developers could lay railroads and other improvements across the Rio Grande Valley. The original board-and-batten house held two main rooms, two small bedrooms, a long front porch, and a kitchen with a brick chimney for a wood stove. A bathroom, a small porch, and a family room were added around 1950.
The American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation System
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In 1905, at the dawn of the Lower Rio Grande Valley's transformation into an agricultural powerhouse, developer B. F. Yoakum gathered investors to turn arid brushland into irrigated farmland. Their company bought a quarter-million acres and built the townsite of Mercedes as its headquarters, and by 1908 pumps were lifting river water into a growing web of canals. Within a dozen years the system had swelled to three main canals and five pumping plants, and it passed to public water districts in 1930 that still serve Valley farmers today.
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