Buchel Bank

The bank on the plaque left a paper trail of its own. The Buchel National Bank of Cuero was organized on February 1, 1907, chartered on February 25 and open for business on March 1, with Otto Buchel as president and Joseph Sheridan as cashier. After Buchel's death in 1909 Sheridan became president and held the office through 1933. The bank issued some 39,000 national bank notes, about $489,000 in face value. Charter 8562 was liquidated on July 24, 1934, and a new Buchel National Bank, chartered that May, succeeded it.

What the plaque says

Buchel Bank Otto Buchel (1849-1909) came to Cuero in 1872, the year of city's founding; operated a mercantile business in partnership with George Seeligson. Buchel had the only safe in town, and within a year began keeping citizens' valuables. With addition of other services, he established a private bank on this site in 1873. Buchel's Bank survived panics, hurricanes, and drouths, giving impetus and stability to early growth of commerce in area. Bank was incorporated in 1907 as Buchel National Bank and still serves this South Texas region as Buchel Bank and Trust Company. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — steps away
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 25 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 27 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 27 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• World War II Air Training School Brayton Flying Field — steps away
• Early Texas Bandstands — steps away
• Cuero Land and Immigration Company — steps away
• St. Mark's Lutheran Church — steps away