Site of Midland County's First Bank
Midland, Midland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First National Bank of Midland. Organized June 16, 1890. First officers were A. W. Hilliard, president; W.H. Cowden, vice president; and W. E. Connell, cashier. Its financial stability has saved its customers from ruin in the face of drouth or other disasters over the years. (1969)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized on June 16, 1890, the First National Bank of Midland was led by president A.W. Hilliard, vice president W.H. Cowden, and cashier W.E. Connell. Through years of drought and other hardships on the West Texas plains, the bank's steadiness helped carry its ranching and farming customers through times that might otherwise have ruined them.
Why it matters
As Midland County's first bank, it provided the financial footing that let a remote frontier community weather hard seasons and put down permanent roots.
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Related people
- · A. W. Hilliard
- · W. H. Cowden
- · W. E. Connell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Former Site of Midland National Bank
Midland, TX
Chartered in Odessa in 1902 as the Odessa National Bank, this institution moved to Midland in 1903 and took the name Midland National Bank, setting up shop in the two-story wooden Llano Hotel, a gathering place for ranchers and businessmen. Fire destroyed the building in 1909, but the rebuilt hotel again housed the bank, whose business shifted from agriculture to oil by 1927. Through new buildings, a 1968 merger, and a 1983 renaming, the bank followed Midland's rise from a ranching town to a center of the oil economy.
Midland County
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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.
The Petroleum Building
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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.