Texas Bankers Association

The bankers who met here wanted one thing above all: repeal of the Texas constitution's ban on chartering state banks. Many of the early leaders were Confederate veterans, and Henry Exall of Lampasas Springs gave the first address. The fight lasted nearly twenty years, until voters approved a dual system of state and national banks in 1904. By 1905 membership reached 630. In 1912 the association founded the Texas Women Bankers Association, the first such group in the nation, and it later helped win the regional Federal Reserve Bank for Dallas instead of New Orleans.

What the plaque says

Texas Bankers Association Organized in 1885, this group is the oldest and largest (with 1,150 member banks as of 1969) State Bankers Association in the United States. Inspired by the ten-year success of the American Bankers Association, two young bankers of Lampasas Springs, Frank R. Malone and E. M. Longcope, composed on May 26, 1885, an enthusiastic letter presenting the need for a similar group in Texas. Being loyal citizens, they also promoted Lampasas Springs as the convention site, praising it as a "great spa" with "scenery...sure to inspire grand thoughts". Published in the "Galveston News", then the leading newspaper in the state, their plan brought immediate response. For the next six weeks an advertisement in the "News" each day announced the future meeting. Thus on July 23, 1885, thirty-one bankers from all over Texas convened here in the plush Park Hotel for a three-day organizational meeting, characterized by the many dynamic young (under 35) men present. Jas. F. Miller, member of Congress and of a private banking firm in Gonzales, was elected first president. The provisions of one of the resolutions passed at the meeting-- to provide for the chartering of state banks-- have been state law since 1905. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 0.8 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 18 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 25 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 27 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• Hanna Springs — steps away
• Lampasas County, C.S.A. — steps away
• Gunfight at the Lampasas Saloon — steps away
• Lampasas County — steps away