The First Bank in Big Lake
Big Lake, Reagan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On this site the first bank in Reagan County was founded, with capital stock of $15,000.00. The initial stockholders meeting was held on March 29, 1913. The title of the institution was the First State Bank of Big Lake. On the original board of directors were James Belcher, P. H. Coates, Henry Japson, C. C. Sanders, W. M. Schneemann, Jr., J. M. Shannon, and J. H. Wilson. That bank began its operations in one room of this structure now used exclusively to house the Reagan State Bank, a successor institution, which was opened for business on September 2, 1969.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Reagan County's first bank was chartered on this site in 1913 as the First State Bank of Big Lake, capitalized at $15,000 by a small circle of local ranchers and businessmen. Its founding board reflected the tight-knit leadership of a frontier community organizing its financial life. The building later housed the Reagan State Bank, a successor institution that opened in 1969.
Why it matters
A town's first bank marks the moment a frontier settlement builds the financial infrastructure needed to sustain commerce and growth.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1900s, Reagan County was ranch country: wide, dry grassland on the western edge of the Edwards Plateau, where cattle and sheep ranching drove the economy. The county had only recently been organized. Big Lake was a young town that took its name from a large, shallow lake bed nearby that fills after rain.
The 1910s were a turning point for American banking. Texas had begun chartering state banks in the early 1900s, so small towns could start their own banks without a national charter. That is why so many Texas towns of this era had a "First State Bank." At the national level, Congress created the Federal Reserve System at the end of 1913, the same year Big Lake's bank opened.
The bank came before the boom. In 1923, a decade after it opened, the famous Santa Rita No. 1 well came in on University of Texas lands in Reagan County. It started the oil development of the Permian Basin and changed the county's fortunes.
People & events
On March 29, 1913, the first stockholders of a new bank met in Big Lake. They were organizing the first bank in Reagan County, with $15,000 in capital stock. The name was simple and hopeful: the First State Bank of Big Lake.
Seven men sat on the first board of directors: James Belcher, P. H. Coates, Henry Japson, C. C. Sanders, W. M. Schneemann Jr., J. M. Shannon and J. H. Wilson. In a small ranching town, a board like that was a roll call of neighbors. They were people willing to put their money and their names behind the idea that Big Lake would last.
The bank started modestly, in a single room of the building that stands here. Over the decades the institution changed. The building later became the home of the Reagan State Bank, a successor that opened on September 2, 1969, and eventually filled the whole structure.
Its place in the American story
In small-town America, a local bank meant more than a place to keep cash. Ranchers could get credit to carry them from one sale to the next, merchants could stock their shelves, and families could borrow to build. Before a bank opened, that business had to go to distant cities. After, a community could finance itself.
The many "First State Banks" of this era reflect a larger story. Across the country, rural people wanted institutions they controlled, and state and federal banking systems were growing up side by side. Big Lake's bank, founded the year the Federal Reserve was created, belongs to that moment of change in American finance.
The timing also matters. Ten years later, oil turned Reagan County and the Permian Basin into one of the country's most important energy regions. The ranchers and merchants who founded this bank couldn't have known that. But when the boom came, they had already built a town with its own financial footing.
If you visit
The marker stands where the bank began, so this is a chance to stand at the start of a town's financial life. Take in the building itself and picture a young bank running out of just one of its rooms.
Big Lake is a quiet West Texas town on open, sky-heavy land, where ranching and oil still sit side by side. On the county's back roads you may notice pump jacks among the pastures, a reminder of the boom that came ten years after this bank opened.
It's a natural stop on a drive across the Permian Basin, or between San Angelo and the oil towns farther west. If you're interested in how the oil boom began, add the Santa Rita story to your trip and read this marker as the prologue.
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
- · J. M. Shannon
- · Henry Japson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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