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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1900s, the lower Rio Grande Valley was changing fast. The arrival of the railroad in the first years of the century connected this far corner of Texas to the rest of the country. Land companies and promoters soon began selling farmland to newcomers, many from the Midwest.
With irrigation drawing on the Rio Grande, the Valley was turning into rich farm country. New towns appeared almost overnight along the rail line, each hoping to become a center for the surrounding farms.
Every new town needed a bank. Farmers needed credit to buy land, equipment, and seed, merchants needed a safe place for their money, and newcomers needed a sign that the town was solid enough to invest in. A bank was often one of the first real institutions a young town could point to.
People & events
The Cameron County Bank of La Feria was founded in 1912, and it moved into this building soon after. The bank was La Feria's first. The building itself was put up by W.A. Strickland, a well-known local contractor, whose work helped give the young town its shape.
The bank's founder was Bailey H. Dunlap, born in Illinois in 1886. He was only in his mid-twenties when he started it, and in 1915 he became La Feria's first mayor, a sign of how closely the town's business and civic leadership were tied together. He lived until 1957.
The bank grew along with the town. It started as a private bank, received a state charter in 1913, and in 1925 was rechartered as the First National Bank of La Feria. In 1927 it moved to new quarters, and this building went on to house other businesses.
Its place in the American story
The early 1900s were a time when towns across the American West were being built almost from scratch, often around a railroad, a land company, and a bank. The Rio Grande Valley was one of the last big farming frontiers in the continental United States, and La Feria's first bank belongs to that story.
Bailey Dunlap's life follows a common pattern of the time: a young Midwesterner who came south, started a business, and helped lead a brand-new town. Many Valley communities owe their start to newcomers like him, who brought capital and ambition and helped create local government.
The bank's path from private bank, to state charter, to national charter also mirrors how banking grew more formal and more regulated in the early twentieth century. A small-town bank like this one helped connect local farms to the wider national economy.
If you visit
You will find this marker in La Feria, in Cameron County in the lower Rio Grande Valley. The building here served as the town's first bank before the bank moved in 1927, so look at it closely: its design and materials reflect the early, hopeful years when La Feria was just getting started.
Take a stroll around the older part of town and imagine it as a new settlement, with farmers coming in from the fields to do business and newcomers stepping off the train to look at land.
La Feria makes an easy stop on a drive through the Valley, whether you are heading toward Harlingen and Brownsville or west up the river. Pair it with other Valley towns that grew up in the same boom years to get a feel for how quickly this region was transformed.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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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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