Site of Midland County's First Bank

W. H. Cowden, one of the bank's founders, was born in Shelby County in 1853 and grew up on his family's ranch in Palo Pinto County. In 1882 the Cowden brothers bought a JAL-branded herd and trailed it through Midland to the White Sand Hills in what is now Lea County, New Mexico, where they ran their JAL ranch for twenty-five years with offices in Midland. He later stocked steers in the Creek Nation of Indian Territory and ranched in Andrews, Crane and Frio counties. He kept his Midland home until he retired from the bank in 1926.

What the plaque says

Site of Midland County's First Bank First National Bank of Midland. Organized June 16, 1890. First officers were A. W. Hilliard, president; W.H. Cowden, vice president; and W. E. Connell, cashier. Its financial stability has saved its customers from ruin in the face of drouth or other disasters over the years. (1969)

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

• Former Site of Midland National Bank — steps away
• Midland County — steps away
• John Valentine Pliska — steps away
• Staked Plains — steps away