Gainesville National Bank

A bank founded in 1882 sat on the cattle trade and then on cotton. The Handbook of Texas says the trail herds of the post-Civil War years made Gainesville a supply point, and that by 1890 it was a commercial and shipping center, helped by two railroads in the 1880s. The town grew from 2,667 people in 1880 to 6,594 in 1890. Cotton kept the town strong for two decades. Then the 1920s cotton collapse hit hard, and the federal banking crisis of 1933 forced the bank mergers the plaque records.

What the plaque says

Gainesville National Bank In this block on October 21, 1882, prominent citizens and landowners J. M. Lindsay and C. C. Hemming founded Gainesville National Bank (GNB). Over the next decades, Gainesville evolved from a frontier town to a thriving community and a financial center for the cattle and cotton industries. In 1902, Judge Lindsay opened the Lindsay National Bank as a branch of GNB. As an immediate result of the federal banking crisis in 1933, First National Bank, Lindsay National Bank and GNB merged, going forward as Gainesville National Bank. An integral part of Cooke County's economic history, the financial institution made additional acquisitions over the years and has been known as Guaranty National Bank since 1990. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 0.3 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 22 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Barbed Wire in Cooke County — steps away
• Cooke County Free Library — steps away
• W. T. G. Weaver — steps away
• Gainesville-Fort Sill Road — 0.2 mi