First State Bank

Loraine began in the early 1880s as a cotton and cattle shipping point on the Texas and Pacific, the Handbook of Texas says, and got a post office in 1890. Parson Crandall bought the townsite from the railroad and platted it in 1905, and growth was quick: a weekly newspaper in 1906, incorporation by 1910, and in 1914 about 800 people and more than forty businesses, among them a bank. A hospital opened in 1938, and in the 1940s Loraine was known for its cheese factory, its dairy show and the Loraine Cooperative Association.

What the plaque says

A leader in area growth. Organized with a capital of $18,000 (1908). Farmers and cattlemen were in majority as stockholders. Presidents have included S.E. Brown, J.C. Hall, K.L. Taylor, and H.J. Mearse. In 1922 a new building was erected and in 1962 the interior was remodeled. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heart of West Texas Museum — 9.0 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 14 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.
• National WASP WWII Museum — 15 mi
  Hangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.
• Pioneer Museum — 19 mi
  Nolan County's settlement story in a dozen rooms of Judge R. A. Ragland's 1906 house in Sweetwater, a town that started as a dugout store for buffalo hunters and a post office called Blue Goose.

More markers nearby

• D.W. "80 John" Wallace — 2.4 mi
• R.C. (Dick) Ware — 7.6 mi
• Comanche Village Massacre — 8.2 mi
• Seven Wells — 8.4 mi