Oldest Bank in the Texas Panhandle

Judge Paul's first bank shared its building with the teacher the plaque names. James Christopher Paul, a Virginia-born former schoolteacher, arrived in January 1888 as treasurer of the Southern Kansas railway and opened the Panhandle Bank on May 6, 1888, with $5,000 from Kansas friends, in a two-story frame building: the bank and Temple L. Houston's law office downstairs, the Paul home upstairs. He became the county's first treasurer, studied law under Houston and passed the bar but never practiced. In 1929 he was one of two passengers on the first flight from Los Angeles to Amarillo.

What the plaque says

Oldest Bank in the Texas Panhandle Second commercial bank opened in the Panhandle of Texas. Oldest in continuous service. Founded by James Christopher Paul, pupil of Sam Houston's son, lawyer Temple Houston. Early settlers throughout the High Plains area were among the first depositors. On May 6, 1927, during great oil boom, Judge Paul and associates opened a second bank, the First National. On December 31, 1942, the two merged. Many present accounts are held by heirs of early depositors. A son of Judge Paul still serves on the Board of Directors. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson County Square House Museum — 0.2 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Gem Theatre — 16 mi
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Hutchinson County Museum — 23 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.
• Lake Meredith National Recreation Area — 24 mi
  A Canadian River reservoir in 200-foot breaks, built to water the Panhandle's cities, that fell to a record 26 feet deep in 2013 and still rises and falls with the drought.

More markers nearby

• Texas Panhandle Pioneers - John F. Weatherlys Family — steps away
• Panhandle Herald — steps away
• Panhandle — steps away
• Callaghan Memorial Library — steps away