State National Bank

The bank's cofounder came to Groom off a newspaper advertisement. Eugene Sherwood Blasdel, an Illinois-born grain man who had walked again by twelve after infantile paralysis, saw a land company's pitch for the Panhandle's "golden opportunities" and arrived in October 1904, opening a lumberyard and, with John Walter Knorpp, the town's first bank. His wife Libbie died in May 1905 and he sold his share. He later farmed near Groom by dry tillage, ran a grain elevator in town, moved to Amarillo in 1912 and served as its mayor in 1923-24.

What the plaque says

State National Bank Founded in 1904 as a private bank by John Walter Knorpp (1867-1952), member of an established banking family of Missouri, New Mexico, and Texas, and Eugene Sherwood Blasdel (1878-1930), oil and grain business developer of this region. In 1905 Blasdel sold his interest to Knorpp. A state charter was obtained in 1908, but surrendered in 1926 for national charter. Patronage from diligent, thrifty early settlers advanced the career of this bank. On its Board of Directors have been members of the pioneer Britten, Fields, Fraser, Harrell, Johnson, Krizan, Slay, and Steele families. I. C. Unsell was cashier from 1908 to 1932. Cecil Culver (born 1903), who came to the bank in 1929 as assistant cashier, purchased the controlling interest from Knorpp and became president in 1951. Adjusting to the crises in the region, State National Bank weathered the panic of 1907, the adversities of the 1930s Dust Bowl, two World Wars, and other national and international experiences. It continues to bolster the cattle, grain, oil, beef feedlot, and other agribusiness interests, and the cultural facilities of Groom and surrounding area. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 13 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• 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.
• Carson County Square House Museum — 18 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.
• Donley County Courthouse — 22 mi
  Bulger and Rapp's red brick and white stone courthouse of 1891, the oldest in use in the Panhandle, given back its third floor and towers in a 2003 restoration.

More markers nearby

• Dr. Charles L. Fields — steps away
• Groom — steps away
• Site of Old Goodnight College — 12 mi
• Town of Goodnight — 12 mi