Former Site of Midland National Bank

Among the cattlemen who did business downtown was Clarence Scharbauer. Born in Albany County, New York, in 1879, he came to Midland in 1889 to join his uncle John, who had prospered first with sheep and then cattle. At sixteen he had his own herd and VXL brand, and at twenty-two he became manager of the new Scharbauer Cattle Company, which he ran until it split into separate ranches in 1912 and again after it was reorganized in 1914. A leader in registered cattle, he built the Scharbauer Hotel in 1927 and found oil on his land in 1935.

What the plaque says

Former Site of Midland National Bank Organized in Odessa on August 22, 1902, as Odessa National Bank, this institution began with an initial capital of $25,000. In June 1903 the shareholders voted to move the bank to Midland and rename it Midland National Bank. Bank offices were set up at this site in the Llano hotel. Built in 1890, the two-story wooden hotel building was a gathering place for ranchers and businessmen. The bank occupied the lower floor of the hotel until 1909, when the structure, along with others in the downtown area, was destroyed by fire. The hotel was rebuilt on the same site, and the bank continued to lease office space. By 1927 the principal business of the bank had shifted from agriculture to the emerging oil industry. A new three-story bank building was erected at the corner of Texas and Big Spring streets in 1953, and a nine-story tower was added in 1957. Midland National and the Bank of the Southwest merged in 1968. In 1976 the bank moved to a new fourteen-story structure at 500 W. Texas. The name of the bank was changed to First City National Bank of Midland in 1983. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bush Family Home State Historic Site — 1.0 mi
  The small 1939 frame house on West Ohio Avenue where George and Barbara Bush raised their young family in Midland's 1950s oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site.
• Museum of the Southwest — 1.1 mi
  Midland's art and science museum in the 1937 house of oilman Fred Turner and his wife Juliette, with added galleries, a children's museum and a planetarium on the grounds.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 1.8 mi
  Midland's museum of the oil basin it sits on, from a restored diorama of the Permian reef to a 40-acre yard of drilling rigs and Jim Hall's Chaparral race cars.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 9.1 mi
  A hangar museum at Midland's airport, run by Commemorative Air Force volunteers, telling how a 1927 grass field became the bombardier college that graduated 6,627 officers in World War II.

More markers nearby

• Site of Midland County's First Bank — steps away
• Midland County — steps away
• John Valentine Pliska — steps away
• Staked Plains — steps away