First National Bank in Rhome

Rhome's money followed its mill. The Handbook of Texas says the town got its name in 1883 for Col. Byron Crandall Rhome, a local rancher credited with bringing the first Herefords to Wise County. By the early 1890s it had 175 residents, a school, a church and two flour mills. One, working by 1898, was the county's first roller mill and possibly Texas's first, grinding wheat with rollers instead of stone burrs. In the 1930s its owner, L. W. Renshaw, was paid $5,000 by General Mills for rights to a brand name he used: Gold Medal.

What the plaque says

First National Bank in Rhome Prominent area businessman Dan Waggoner began this financial institution in 1904 as a branch of his privately-owned bank in Decatur (15 mi. NW). His son, W.T., served for a time as its president. Rhome's first bank was given a national charter in 1914 and grew steadily through the years. Its sound financial policies enabled it to survive the period of the Great Depression. Headquartered downtown for more than seventy years, the First National Bank in Rhome has been located at this site since 1975. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wise County Courthouse — 14 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 20 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 22 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 22 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.

More markers nearby

• United Methodist Church of Rhome — steps away
• Aurora Cemetery — 1.7 mi
• Site of First Post Office in Wise County, Odessa — 4.1 mi
• Dido Cemetery — 7.1 mi